


It Will Come Back

by trinityofone



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Amnesia, Body Horror, Demon Shane Madej, Identity Porn, M/M, Magic, Shapeshifting, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-10 23:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16464032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/pseuds/trinityofone
Summary: "Did you ever have an imaginary friend?" Ryan asks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my ridiculous epic, the Demon Shane fic of my dreams and nightmares. It seemed appropriate to get the first part up in time for Halloween. I really hope you enjoy -- and I'm intending to finish this for NaNo, so more should be coming soon!
> 
> Huge thanks to Siria for betaing, and to fiveyearmission for encouragement and inspiring this story--and my journey into this fandom--in the first place.
> 
> Disclaimer: This story is not remotely real; it's got demons in it. So many demons. Oh no.

For the longest time, all it knows is darkness. Black upon black, and only gradually does it become aware that there are layers to the blackness. Only gradually does it become aware: of the ashy pitch of the air as distinct from the obsidian tangle of itself and its clutch as they wriggle and writhe toward the masters’ outstretched fingers, illuminated by the distant red pulse of Hellfire.

These are the hands that hold it and feed it, tiny tastes of terror, of rage and regret, harvested from the endless echelons of the damned. These are the whispers it’s raised on: of its own small but exalted purpose. It is the sower of seeds, the masters’ missionary who will slither up out of the black and torment the weak and venal mortals while they lie vulnerable in their beds. It will haunt the dreams of their young, teach them fear and loathing and distrust when they are most ripe to be taught—the loveliest little push down the path to sin. 

It grows there in the black, until it is fat and greedy, desperate for more, gliding down the hot, hoary skin of a master’s arm as it’s led to the passageway, and from there oozing eagerly onto the scorched ground. Then it is crawling up, up, up and through, the world twisting, the mortal plane sliding into alignment beneath its belly and suddenly everything is vast and open, and though it is night—the time it has been taught is its own—the sky which, until now, it has only heard about, is bright and full of stars.

It stops for a moment, staring; though it does not have what could properly be called eyes, it sees. Then it collects itself, and, spurred into motion by the masters’ words and its readiness to meet its small but exalted purpose with _gusto_ , it slithers off into the night. 

Brand new ambassador of fear, corruptor of the young—it seeks out its first child.

* * *

“When you were a kid, did you ever have an imaginary friend?”

Ryan’s not sure what prompts the question; just, it’s been a long dull car ride, and they’ve already covered all their usual topics, fought about the radio, had a discussion about popcorn balls that got a little too heated and only ended when Devon stole Ryan’s hat and threatened to throw it out the window, and listened to the clack of Mark’s knitting needles for several solid minutes in silence. Having all five of them in one car can be a bit much under the best of circumstances, and it’s proving especially so today, what with the traffic and the stuffiness and whatever weird stomach thing TJ’s got going on. But they are Saving Money, and that’s gonna mean they’ll be able to pull out all the stops for the finale, and that’s worth more than a little awkwardness and discomfort in Ryan’s book.

Still he wants to know why Shane, sitting next to him up front with his long legs tangled up in the wheel well like a pretzel, is giving him such A Look. “What?”

“What do you think, Ryan?”

Ryan sighs in exasperation only partially motivated by the fact that he’s been trying to change lanes for approximately 47 minutes. “I don’t know, maybe I thought that before your cynical heart hardened into the crusty old cinderblock it is today, _maybe_ , when you were a little kid, you might have had some sense of wonder or semblance of imagination.” 

Shane snorts. “That was way harsh, Ry.” He has the nerve to look delighted with himself.

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Teej, what about you?”

He catches a glimpse of TJ blinking balefully in the rearview mirror. “Sometimes I think all my friends have been imaginary.” 

Shane tilts his head back and laughs, palm slapping against his thigh, and Ryan’s going to drive off and leave TJ the next time he makes them stop at a gas station to use the restroom.

“I had one, sort of,” pipes up Devon, because in spite of the hat thing, she is an actual angel. “It’s…well. It’s kind of a weird story.”

“Weird?” Ryan can tell from Shane’s expression that his face must be doing something spectacular, but Ryan can’t help it—he loves shit like this. He’s probably bouncing in his seat a little and he doesn’t care. “My kind of weird?”

“Ryan, no one could match your level of weird.” Shane winks at him, then cranes his neck toward the back seat, flourishing a gentlemanly palm in Devon’s direction. “Continue.”

“Well… I was one of those little kids who loves to draw. If my mom needed to get something done, she could just plop me down with a pad or a big sheet of butcher paper—remember those?”

The car fills with a collective coo of appreciation for those big rolls of butcher paper.

“So yeah,” Devon continues, nodding, “any drawable surface and my big tub of Crayolas—I had all these loose, stubby crayons in a plastic tub with a handle. She’d set me up with those, and I would draw for hours. But then at some point my mom noticed that I was drawing the same thing over and over again. Like not only that, but in between the flowers and little houses and pictures of our cat. Over and over again, these two blue ovals.”

“Ryan wants to say ‘Aliens!’ so bad right now.”

“Shut up, Shane. I do not.” Ryan is leaning only about 30% toward aliens.

He catches a glimpse of Devon in the rearview mirror, shaking her head again. “No, not ships or flying saucers or anything. ‘Cause my mom finally asked me what they were, and I told her: ‘It’s a Bay.’”

“Your bae? What year was this?” TJ asked, with the panic common to some of the older BuzzFeed employees discovering the ages of interns or new hires.

“You caught me, TJ. This was 2014 and I am now but a wee lass of seven years.”

Ryan’s trying not to crash the car and kill them all, so he can’t fully see the ensuing scuffle, but it looks like Devon tries to violate TJ’s ankle with the toe of her sneaker, but TJ retaliates, accidentally landing most of his return volley on Mark, who’s sitting between them and doesn’t react except to delicately move his knitting out of the way. “Don’t make me pull over,” Ryan says, and some of his feigned grouchiness is genuine: he really wants to hear the rest of the story, dammit!

“Sorry, Dad!” Devon says. “Anyway: no, not bae, B-A-E. B-A-Y…like the body of water, but not.”

“All the spelling semantics are really upping the atmosphere of this chilling tale,” Shane says dryly.

Devon and TJ chorus “Shut up, Shane!” and Shane grins as he meets Ryan’s eyes with a glance, because they both know that when Devon and TJ do this, the one they are really making fun of is Ryan.

“ANYWAY… My mom asked me what the ovals were, and I told her, ‘It’s a Bay.’ And she said, ‘What’s a Bay?’ And I looked at her like, _mommy, why are you so dumb_ , and said, ‘The thing that sits in my room. It has no face, but eyes.’”

Devon lets that hang there. For a moment Ryan hears nothing aside from the sound of his own deep gulp; even Mark’s knitting needles have stilled.

And it’s Mark who finally speaks: “Damn, girl.”

Then Shane has to go and ruin it: “Wait, wait, wait.” He’s twisted half around in his seat, knees up past his chin and all hunkered over like Gollum. “Do you actually remember seeing this thing?”

“…No,” Devon admits. “I actually don’t remember any of this. I mean, I remember the crayon bucket and the butcher paper and all of that, but the Bay, drawing the ovals—I only remember my mom telling me about them.”

Shane’s still twisted around, but Ryan can tell from just a sliver of profile—without even looking, honestly—that his face is all smug and satisfied. “Come on,” Ryan says preemptively, “why would Devon’s mom make something like this up?” 

“I’m not calling Devon’s mother a _liar_ ,” Shane says calmly. “I’m sure this all happened. But I’m also sure that little kids are super weird.”

“O.G. weird,” TJ agrees.

“Yeah,” says Shane, “and they think and say weird shit.”

He turns back around to look at Ryan, and Ryan wants to maintain the buzz of his annoyance with him, but there’s something odd about his expression. Something strangely…tender, and maybe he’s lost in nostalgia for his own weirdo childhood, which Ryan is just starting to try to picture—baby Shane with his blobfish face and even more hilariously disproportionate head—when Shane says knowingly, “Come on, Ryan. Don’t tell me you weren’t the most eccentric little munchkin.” 

“I had a perfectly ordinary childhood,” says Ryan, automatically. “I mostly just hung out with my brother and all my other friends.”

“Ahh, a little social butterfly,” Shane says, leaning back in his seat with a sigh.

“Just did a lot of normal kid stuff,” continues Ryan, not sure why he is still talking. He can see Devon in the back seat arching an eyebrow.

“So, guys, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think baby Ryan might have been a tiny baby serial killer,” TJ says, and then grimaces violently. “Uh, can we pull over somewhere soon?”

Ryan rolls his eyes, but manages within a couple of miles to find TJ a McDonald’s. Before Ryan’s even engaged the parking brake, TJ takes off at a sprint. Shane, watching him, lets out a chuckle, the sadist: “Ryan, whadaya think, is this another Sallie House situation? Is there a _demon_ in this car?”

“Maybe he just ate a bunch of airport hot dogs, like an idiot,” Ryan counters. 

Devon taps the back of Ryan’s seat. “As much as I enjoy this old chestnut, as long as we’re here, I’m gonna go, too.”

She opens the door and Mark carefully sets down his ball of wool and scoots out after her. “French fries,” is the only explanation he offers.

The door clicks shut behind him. The car is hot and close. Ryan can feel the weight of Shane’s eyes on him. Normally, he’ll admit, he likes it—Shane’s focus, his attention—but right now it’s a lot, too much, and Ryan’s stomach turns; he wonders if what TJ’s got is actually something contagious. He needs some air. He unclicks his seatbelt: “Gonna stretch my legs.”

“Good idea,” says Shane, unfolding.

Once they’re outside the car, Shane walks around to Ryan’s side of it. They stand side by side, and this, suddenly, is fine. Comfortable, even. Ryan takes a deliberate breath; the air, for better or worse, tastes more than a little bit like McDonald’s, but it’s not the same stale car air they’ve been breathing for hours, and Ryan inhales deeply, stretching his arms above his head.

He’s not sure what to make of it when Shane grabs his wrist. His long fingers latch onto the space between Ryan’s jacket and the base of his thumb, and he pushes the fabric up and back, twisting Ryan’s hand around so he can see the inside of Ryan’s forearm where the skin’s a little paler and lightly ridged with veins. He does it so casually, not rough but calmly possessive, and Ryan finds himself stunned into silence, into stillness. Shane bends his head like he’s studying his phone, only it’s Ryan’s wrist he’s staring at so intently, Ryan’s wrist his thumb is stroking up like he’s looking for the best place to jab a needle.

It’s that thought— _needles_ —that shakes Ryan out of it. He jerks his hand back, unnecessarily hard; Shane doesn’t try to hold on. 

“What the hell are you doing?”

Shane shrugs; as usual he’s oblivious to his own strangeness. “Thought you had a bee on you.”

“A bee?!” Ryan is pretty sure Shane is full of shit, but you know, better safe than sorry. He checks himself over, perhaps a little too vigorously. 

“Ryan, don’t worry,” Shane says, in that soothing voice of his, and Ryan has pretty much given up beating himself up for wanting to sink back into it like a warm blanket. “There’s nothing there.”

He reaches out and thumbs Ryan’s wrist again, right over the pulse point.

“See? Nothing.”

Of course, that’s the moment TJ comes back, looking unjustly smug for someone who just finished doing unspeakable things to a McDonald’s bathroom. He sees them and stops in his tracks. “Omigawd, did you just propose?” he coos, cackling.

The look Shane shoots him is impressively dismayed. “That’s not how you propose,” he says. He makes a deliberate show of rotating Ryan’s wrist so that the skin he’d just been fondling is pointed down and Ryan could properly show off his engagement ring, were he sporting one. It’s enough like his earlier manhandling that Ryan shivers a little. He knows he’s blushing and just, in general, making all of this worse.

“ _This_ is how you propose,” Shane says, because he’s a grandstanding attention whore, and then he drops down to one knee on the ground of the McDonald’s parking lot, because—call him a grandstanding attention whore all you like, he always commits to the bit.

“Get up,” Ryan says. “You didn’t even get me a ring, you cheap fuck.”

“I want to take you with me to pick it out; I know you can be so particular, baby.” Shane is not very good at keeping a straight face; he’s laughing by now, so much he’s even tearing up a bit, and Ryan’s laughing, and staring _down_ into Shane’s eyes, which is nice for once, and his heart’s racing a little, and this has been a very strange day, but that’s what Ryan likes about working with Shane—about working on _Unsolved_ , and, therefore, consequently, with Shane.

“Teej is Instaing this, isn’t he,” Ryan says through the aftershocks of his giggling.

“Indubitably.”

Shane stands up, brushing off the knees of his chinos. It’s only after Devon and Mark return a minute later, snacking jointly from a large fries and there’s the whole song and dance of Devon pouting and then crowing when TJ shows her his footage of what she missed—it’s only then that Ryan realizes he’s taken his abandoned right wrist into the cradle of his left hand. He catches himself pressing the pad of his thumb into the stretch of skin Shane had touched, had examined so intently, and as he looks down he thinks for a second that he sees the shadow of something there: a black mark like the fuzzy shadow of a bad tattoo. But he blinks and there’s nothing, it’s nothing— _“There’s nothing there,” Shane had said_ —and jeez, get a grip, Ryan.

Some things, he reminds himself, are too ridiculous, even for him.

* * *

Fear is such a sweet thing. Especially when cultivated so expertly: practice makes perfect, after all, so each night it hones its craft, observing, experimenting, learning. To begin with it simply makes itself into shadow things: nebulous and dark, like the place of its birth. Then it adds eyes—red and glowing, like those distant wisps of Hellfire it remembers so well.

This, it knew, was the essence of what was expected of it: teaching a generation of children to fear the darkness and the unknown. And yet somehow, instinctively, it knows that it can do more.

So night by night, it starts trying something new.

Horrors that are vague and ill-defined have their place: they’re so much easier for mortal children to project all their ingrown terrors upon. Certainly, they do the job. But they’re also far too easy to brush off. What really makes an impact, it learns, is the specific, the tailor-made. If it spends an initial night merely watching, peering into a subject’s dreams, luxuriating in their childish, half-realized fears and desires, it discovers it can begin to get a sense of what won’t just frighten, but terrify. It can be more than just some cheap scare, forgotten with the cleansing light of day; why, if it really puts in the effort, it can become the source of a major phobia that will last a lifetime!

The first time it doesn’t return to its masters come dawn, it spends all day quaking amidst a pile of dust bunnies beneath a mortal boy’s red race car bed. Its own fear is far from enriching; by the time night rolls around, it is so skinny and weak, it can barely muster the strength to change its shape, to take the form it’s been contemplating and refining all day, soaking up the essence of its unwitting host from the air he’s breathed, the things he’s touched, the energy that pervades the entirety of his space and wafts off of his tender little soul in waves. For the first few hours of the night, it can do little more than listen to him breathe, lick at the edges of his dreams. But slowly, slowly, it gathers its strength and its will, and, oozing out from beneath one fake plastic wheel, it grows, tremulously, into its new shape.

When the boy awakes and spots the huge black dog crouched at the end of his bed, slathering teeth bared and massive paws poised to spring, he screams so loudly his parents think he’s being murdered. The combined force of their fear, parents and child, renders it nearly drunk: sloppy and almost unable to summon the wherewithal to slither away.

It’s so intoxicated, in fact, that it forgets to fear its masters’ wrath until it has already returned to their clutches. The nearest master picks it up, teeth glinting in the dim bloody light, and suddenly it can taste its own end: the grind and snap of those jaws, or another pair just like them, and it writhes like an eel, frantic for the never before questioned gift of its existence. It wants another taste of the pure, perfectly cultivated terror on which it supped that night; it wants to learn the sweet weakness in another thousand such souls. It wants to see another starscape; another river rushing through rolling reeds; another raccoon, shrew, owl; another huddled human home with a single light lit against the darkness. 

It wants to _live_.

Its torment clearly delights its master, but the richness of its harvest delights the master too. _You’ve done well, little worm_ , it whispers. _Share your bounty._

The bite its master takes out of its side takes weeks to fully regrow, and even after the wound finally heals, it sticks to shadow-shapes for quite some time.

* * *

By the time they make it to the motel, Ryan just wants to sleep. They’ve booked three rooms between the five of them, and as is always the case when this is the set-up, Ryan and TJ fall all over themselves to ensure that Devon feels free to take the single without implying in the slightest that this is because she is a girl. Shane, unchivalrously, stays out of it, while Mark, Markishly, likewise recuses himself. Usually Devon just laughs at them a little before snagging her key and sauntering off with her suitcase and share of the equipment—“Yes, because this makes up for misogyny,” she once quipped, making her exit—but tonight, Shane looks up from his phone just as they’re winding down and says, “And for once we won’t have to worry about Devon feeling left out and lonely, since her old friend the Bay might stop by.”

“So I’ll be sharing with Mark,” says Devon, after a long and weighty pause.

Mark shrugs and trails after her with his camera bag. TJ emits an uncomfortable laugh. “Was that your play for the single?”

Shane looks genuinely affronted. “That was me saving Mark from having to share a bathroom with you tonight.”

He reaches into his jacket pocket, and then a second later a plastic bottle is bouncing off TJ’s chest. TJ catches it off the fumble. “Take some Tums, buddy,” Shane says; then even though Ryan has their key, he’s off, leading the way to their room.

“You are evil,” Ryan tells him, following.

Shane puffs out an exasperated breath. “I bought Teej Tums!”

“Pure evil,” repeats Ryan.

“Well,” says Shane, pushing into the dark room the second the lock’s sensor has turned green, “not for lack of trying.”

Ryan doesn’t try to decode what Shane means, because honestly, on a good day he won’t understand a solid quarter of the things Shane says. He kicks off his shoes the moment he’s in the door, sends a silent apology to the Sneaker Gods, and collapses face-first on the nearest bed. The groan he lets out sounds vaguely obscene. He rolls his head on his neck and watches as Shane lines up his backpack and duffle bag along the wall before stepping over to the bedside table and clicking on the lamp. Ryan doesn’t know why, but hotel rooms tend to have a particular quality of light, warm and soft as butterscotch. It washes over Shane, rendering his features fuzzy and indistinct. Still, Ryan feels the weight of Shane’s gaze on him—probably he’s thinking that Ryan looks like a deflated pool toy, and plotting the wittiest way to inform him of this fact. Ryan, fully cognizant that Shane hasn’t said anything, is about to tell him to shut up, when all of a sudden Shane drops to all fours and peers under Ryan’s bed.

From where he’s lying, all Ryan can see is the long line of Shane’s back, a little hill of plaid fabric between two mountainous floral bedspreads. The covers shift beneath his body—probably Shane pulling on the dust ruffle. “Did you lose a contact?” Ryan asks, pushing up onto his elbow, then immediately realizes it’s a dumb question: Shane’s been wearing his glasses all day.

“Nope,” Shane says.

Semi-upright now, Ryan can see him turn his attention to the other bed, where he repeats the process: dust ruffle up, neck down. “Then what are you doing?”

“Looking under the bed,” Shane says.

“Well, ask a stupid question,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes pointlessly, because Shane’s not even looking at him anymore. “ _Why_ are you looking under the bed?”

Shane pauses for half a second, then slowly cranes his neck back up toward Ryan. “Well, as a matter of fact, Ryan, I am checking for ghouls.”

“Ha ha,” Ryan says. He’s silent for a minute as Shane gets up, walks over to the closet, and inspects its interior as well.

Ryan…doesn’t get it. It’s disconcerting: Shane almost never lays down a comedy bit that Ryan’s not ready and eager to pick up. But this doesn’t feel right; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to _do_ with it. There’s a sudden tightness in his gut.

“Are you… Are you making fun of me?”

Shane pauses with his hand on the doorknob. Then he’s clicking the closet shut, walking back around to the space between their two beds. He sits down opposite Ryan, gangly noodle arms folded forward onto his knees.

“I’m just being a doofus. Sorry.” He looks at Ryan and twitches his mouth into something like a grin.

Ryan finds himself grinning back, although he doesn’t _mean_ it; it’s some sort of Pavlovian response. He wants to keep studying Shane’s stupid sphinx face, but Shane lets out an exaggerated yawn and drops backward onto the mattress.

“Yeah, well, you better up your game tomorrow.” Ryan almost loses control of the last word as a yawn of his own slips out. Dammit. “If this represents your A-material, this episode’s gonna suck.”

“Eh, I’m sure you could carry it.” Shane yawns again, then sits up enough to unlace his boots at an angle no human being has ever before used to unlace boots. “Wanna see if you can find a movie?”

There’s no cheap motel room TV in America that doesn’t have a late-night horror movie playing on at least one of its channels; Ryan has accumulated enough scientific evidence on the subject to satisfy even Shane. Sure enough, three clicks later, he’s found _The Thing_ only about ten minutes into its runtime. It provides the oddly relaxing soundtrack to their nighttime routine, and once Ryan’s in his PJs and under the covers, he listens to Shane’s soft, occasional wheezes as he drifts off to sleep.

He doesn’t wake in the night. But he dreams.

* * *

Here’s what it can tell right away: the boy is small for his age. He’s all inky cowlicks and chipmunk cheeks and eyes too big for his face. He’s mostly happy, but beneath his innocent, unexamined happiness is a tantalizing undercurrent of anxiety, widening like a river heavy with snowmelt. He has a new baby brother, upon whom his parents are lavishing their attention. What if they don’t ever have time for him again? Need him now that there’s this tiny replacement? _Love_ him anymore?

Good stuff. A little existential for its purposes, but there’s potential here. It licks its lips—metaphorically; it doesn’t have lips—and oozes out from under the boy’s bed where it’s been sifting lazily through his dreams. The boy has slipped out of REM and into a lighter, more restless sleep; he rolls over, tightening his grip on his doll. Mortal children, it has learned, aren’t reared in a clutch with hundreds of siblings’ bodies to slither over and under and against; instead, they must make do with dull inanimate stand-ins, usually made of some soft plush. This one is shaped like a bear, wearing—as it is pretty sure bears do not—a tiny blue coat and red hat. The boy snuggles against his toy’s soft snout, emitting little nonsense sleep sounds, and it thinks: _perfect_.

It slithers to the end of the bed and becomes a bear.

Its interpretation of the animal is, of course, a little different. Larger. Toothier. But it’s gentle as it takes a heavily clawed paw and slowly presses its weight onto the boy’s ankle.

He comes awake with a snuffle. The boy blinks crusty eyes in the dim half-light, his room illuminated by the glint of a streetlight through the blinds and a Snoopy nightlight. And its brand new eyes, glowing yellow in the dark.

There’s a delicious pause as the boy squints in its direction. It can clearly see him trying to make sense of what he’s seeing; it widens the long, toothy barrel of its snout, just to give him an extra hint. 

The boy lets go of his stuffed bear and leans forward. It leans forward too, ready for everything that’s about to wash over it: the racing heart and panicked intake of breath; the eyes widening from a sight they will never unsee. And the screams. So often, it earns itself the sweetest screams. It can tell this is on the way toward being a tasty one.

The boy’s breathing has quickened. His little shoulders are tensed, trembling. He hasn’t blinked in at least a minute. He’s quivering all over like poorly nocked arrow. And then his mouth opens.

“Hi,” he says.

He reaches out with a soft tiny hand; instinctively, it scrambles back. Its movements are inelegant on these unfamiliar limbs; it catches a claw on the sheets and tumbles back against the footboard. The little boy laughs. “It’s okay,” he says. “Don’t be scared.”

 _Don’t be_ scared _?_ A mortal child is telling _it_ that? It has a number of indignant responses in mind, but it can’t articulate any of them. It doesn’t know how to speak.

The boy is crawling toward it on his hands and knees. He _is_ afraid—it can still feel the fear rolling off him in little waves and pulses. But there’s some other feeling there, all entwined, and whatever it is, it’s making this insane child _keep coming toward it._

_Stop_ , it wants to say. _You’re not supposed to— You can’t—_

But apparently he can; he does. The boy sits back on his haunches right across from it, and meets its glowing yellow eyes with his soft brown ones. It can hear the boy's heartbeat, sense the pulse of his fear-excitement-fear-excitement-fear-wonder-awe. Slowly—gathering courage, or so as not to spook _it_ —the boy reaches out his delicate little fingers and touches the back of its paw.

When it envisioned this form, when it first assumed it, the black-brown fur with which it covered its body was rough like the skin of a shark, was sharp like needles. But by the time the boy touches it, its sense of itself has shrunk, diminished, and its fur is just…furry. A bit bristly but almost soft. Not unpleasant or horrific at all.

The boy’s mouth widens into a big bright smile. “You can _change_ ,” the boy says, and it realizes it must have involuntarily altered itself further: its jaw feels less pronounced, its teeth less sharp. It would be blushing now, if blushing were a thing that it could do.

The tentative touch of the boy’s fingertips become a reassuring pat. “You’re _amazing_ ,” he says. “Wow! What _are_ you? Do you have a name?”

Slowly, without really meaning to, it shakes its head.

“That’s okay,” says the boy. He squeezes its paw in his warm little hand. 

He says, “I’m Ryan.”

* * *

“Ryan. _Ryan_.” A hand on his shoulder, shaking him. “Time to get up, buddy. Those ghouls aren’t going to hunt themselves.”

“Ergh,” Ryan says. Then he says, “Bears.”

“Lions and tigers,” suggests Shane. 

“No.” Ryan rolls over, scrubbing the heel of his palm across his eyes. “Just bears. A bear. A big big bear.”

“I assume we’re talking about a dream you had,” says Shane, dryly. “Additionally, I assume we’re talking about the kind of bear that shits in the woods, not the West Hollywood kind. Though if not, no judgment. And, actually: no judgment to the West Hollywood kind of bear if they also choose to shit in the woods. We each get only one life; who am I to tell anyone how to live theirs?”

Ryan pushes up onto his elbows. “What are you talking about?”

“Bears,” Shane reminds him, helpfully. “Was it a bad news bear dream? Did I get murked again?” He looks almost excited at the thought.

“No,” says Ryan. “You weren’t—” He stops. “I don’t really remember.”

“Well, it made for a riveting story,” Shane says. “Do you wanna get dressed, put your face on? Devon says she found a friendly looking diner.”

The diner’s in walking distance down the road, which is nice; Ryan’s not quite ready to get back in a car after yesterday’s trauma. TJ skips out of his motel room like a man who’s walked through the valley of the shadow of intestinal issues and emerged triumphant, and possibly several pounds lighter, on the other side. Mark and Devon come out of their shared double looking like people who slept a lot better than Ryan did. Devon bounces and claps her hands. “Pancakes!”

“Ugh,” Ryan and Shane say in unison. 

Surprising no one, they both order waffles. Waffles are inherently excellent, but, delightfully for a roadside diner in the middle of nowhere, these turn out to be _especially_ excellent. Ryan is unabashedly obnoxious and films an Instagram story right at the table: it’s mostly just Shane saying “WAFFLES!” and making crazy eyes at the camera before stuffing a bite the size of his impossibly large head into his weirdly small mouth. He continues chewing extravagantly even after Ryan’s stopped filming, licking syrup off his long fingers and catching stray drips all the way down to the knob of his wrist.

“All right, you animal, you can stop now,” Ryan tells him through a laugh.

Shane shakes his head. “I can never stop. I’m a man and I’ve got _needs_ , Ryan, needs!”

The others stop talking about whatever they’re talking about long enough for TJ to confiscate Ryan’s phone. “Ryan,” TJ says, “eat your food.”

Ryan wants to eat his food, because his food is delicious. Still, he feels the need to whine: “Shane’s distracting me, he’s very distracting. He’s doing inappropriate things to his waffle. He’s making all these _noises_.”

“Humans make sounds when they eat, Ryan,” says Shane, slurping obscenely. 

“Yeah, well what’s your excuse, then?” says Ryan, which he will admit is not his best-ever retort, seeing as it doesn’t even make sense. “You sound like—”

For once he stops himself _before_ he says something crazy. _You sound like the bear in my dream. It was eating something._ He can feel the weight of the sentences on his tongue, but they are very weird sentences, even for him. Yet there’s something there he can’t shake. _Blood on the rug. A hunched, hunkered back. The gnash of teeth on bone—_

“Ry?” Shane takes the fork out of his hand; he didn’t even realize he was holding it, clenching. He blinks down, surprised: he’s bent it almost in half.

“Oh no,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Shane says, “we’ll just tell the waitress you were practicing your Uri Geller act.”

“And leave a big tip,” says TJ.

“Probably wise,” Shane says. His thumb smooths over Ryan’s wrist again; then he lets go. “Here,” he says, handing Ryan his own fork; he’s cleaned his plate already. “Finish your food.”

“I have a weird feeling about this shoot,” says Devon, like she just needed to get that out there.

“Feels a little cursed,” agrees Mark.

“Well, it’s definitely cursed _now_ ,” Ryan says, reintroducing himself to his waffle.

“Maybe we all just need a lot more coffee,” TJ says.

He orders them all a lot more coffee. Ryan drinks his and tries to let the sweet, sweet caffeine wash away all memory of the previous uneasy night. But then he catches a tooth on the edge of his fork and it comes rushing back: those awful scraping sounds, harsh and somehow wet, juicy—

He shivers; it’s not even nine a.m. and he’s already all flopsweaty from fear, before they’ve so much as laid eyes on the location. Shane, meanwhile, is sitting across from him, blithely gazing out the window as he sips from his heavy white diner mug, and not for the first time, Ryan wishes he could be more like him: disbelieving, ignorant, without a supernatural care in the world.

Fearless.

* * *

Look, there’s no suave way to spin this: it runs away. 

A mortal boy scares it shitless and it flees from him. Dissolves from under his touch, reduced in its fear and its haste into barely more than black sludge. It hears the boy cry, “Wait, come back!” and then it’s through a crack above the windowsill, flopping down into a bed of his mother’s manzanitas.

Never before has it craved so deeply the safe black blankness of its pen in Hell. It wants the masters’ soft whispers and even their far from soft hands—the familiar safety of home. Except its home is _not_ safe, not if it comes back so strung out and skinny. Unproductive members of its family are disposed of, taken for what little nourishment they have to offer before they disintegrate entirely. One unfruitful night _shouldn’t_ be enough to doom it, but Hell doesn’t play fair: it’s Hell. 

So it has to execute a quick, sloppy job. Somehow, before the sun comes up, it finds the closest child, does a standard “nebulous black smoke with glowing eyes” routine that is _significantly_ below its dignity, then practically hurls itself into the crack between realms. It lies limply in the master’s hands as it’s inspected, but it passes muster: it isn’t immediately killed, which is how it knows.

It lies still all day—or rather, for the mutable, arbitrary stretch of time that down here, in this particular instance, corresponds to a mortal day—soaking up the sulfurous heat as bodies writhe all around it. It tries thinking. It also tries not thinking. 

It discovers it’s not very good at that.

If only, it thinks, pointlessly—because all if onlys are as pointless as fairness in Hell—if only it could ask one of its siblings if they had this problem, too. This thinking thing. Because it realizes it has lately come to consider itself special, unique, _better_ , and now it isn’t sure if the situation is more frightening if this is indeed true, and it’s all alone with whatever is intrinsically wrong with it, or if it’s _not_ , and they’re all like this: each and every slimy, slithering form, trapped with all these complicated thoughts that none of them will ever be able to communicate, to each other or anyone else.

It doesn’t recall making a conscious decision, but that night, when it’s time to go upworld again, it heads without hesitation back to the boy’s house. His boy, the boy with the bear. Ryan.

 _Ryan_. He’s a mortal boy, a human being, and so he has a name: Ryan. It feels like it can almost taste the word on its tongue— _Ryan_ —but of course it doesn’t have one. 

So it makes itself into something with a tongue: a modified version of the bear from the night before (modified because it’s pretty sure all those teeth would get in the way of clear speech, should it accomplish any). Squatting now beneath the boy’s— _Ryan’s_!—window, it unfurls the length of its new tongue like a carpet. The stretch alone is surprisingly satisfying: the first workings of a new muscle, eager for use. Unfortunately, it hasn’t thought much beyond this stage. 

_Step 1: Mouth_  
_Step 2: Tongue_  
_Step 3: ???_  
_Step 4: Human speech!_

It waggles its tongue around, attempting to make sounds, trying all kinds of crazy curls and contortions. At one point it thinks it manages something like a gurgle, maybe, but come on. It’s fooling itself. 

It is still, foolishly, manipulating the flesh of its cheeks with its paws and slapping the roof of its mouth with its tongue when there’s the whish of a window being opened above it, and the boy peeks his head out.

“Hi!” he says in an extraordinarily loud whisper. “You came back! I was watching for you and hoping you would and you came back!”

It did. It still can’t explain it, but it did.

“Do you want to come in?”

It does.

Ryan holds out his arms. Offering to help.

And it lets him. It could grow taller, bigger, and make the climb itself, or smaller, slippery, and glide up the wall on its own. But it wraps its paws around Ryan’s skinny little-boy forearms and lets itself be scooped up under the armpits and hoisted up like a toy. That’s probably all it is to this boy, really: just another new toy.

Ryan’s got its awkward bear body as far as the windowsill when he begins to overbalance on the small plastic stool he’s standing on. His fear knifes into its senses, but the taste is bitter and unpleasant somehow, and it reacts without thinking, somersaulting forward onto the floor, heedless of its body which, after all, cannot be broken. It stretches itself, grows taller until it’s big enough to catch the boy in its arms and lower him gently to the floor.

It steps back immediately, shamed. There’s no way it can pretend that this is not a complete betrayal of its function, its small but exalted purpose. If the masters knew, they would probably bite it into bits and spit the pieces out.

And yet it’s having a hard time truly sinking into its existential shame spiral, because Ryan is bouncing around him saying, “Wow! That was awesome! You’re so awesome! You have _superpowers_. Are you an X-Man? Do you want to see my X-Men?”

And then suddenly it is examining with great care a series of plastic, poorly articulated toys, all of which—unlike it—have names and backstories that Ryan knows and is eager to relate in great detail.

“Hey,” he says, breaking off at one point from telling it how the X-Men fought something called “The Shadow King,” a story that it would, surprisingly, like to hear more about. “You know who you kind of look like? Beast!” Ryan sorts hurriedly through his toys. “See?”

The plastic figure he is holding up is very…blue. The material is sculpted into lumps that it thinks are supposed to simulate fur, and the creature’s jaw sports delicately detailed fangs, its hands sharp claws. It looks like something that _ought_ to be scary—if it weren’t three inches tall and plastic, of course—but clearly Ryan is not scared of this creature; he _likes_ it.

“Wow, yeah, you totally look like Beast!” Ryan holds the toy up next to its face, as if to better conduct the comparison. “I mean, you’re not blue, but—”

It can be blue if it wants to be blue. So then it is blue.

Ryan squeals with delight and it has to hold one newly-blue finger up to its lips in a desperate attempt to get him to quiet down before he wakes his parents, his brother, and the entire neighborhood. It can’t remember from whose head it picked up this sign, but it seems to work. Ryan lowers the volume to an embarrassed giggle. “This is so cool,” he says. “You’re so cool. You’re _Beast_.”

He sighs happily, sitting back on his haunches and looking up at it in a way no one has ever looked up at it before. “ _My_ Beast.”

In their youths, it will one day learn, some humans have goth phases, or dye their hair questionable colors, or encourage their friends to call them truly terrible nicknames. 

It will never have that. But it does have the period, those first heady months of knowing Ryan, when every night it turns itself blue, and answers to Beast.

* * *

“Hey, Sasquatch, could you maybe try not blocking the entire shot with your enormous skull?”

“Squatch needs room to roam, baby!” Shane says, but he ducks out of the way. 

Technically they’re filming establishing shots, but with the weird level of quasi-reality their show maintains, that means Mark is filming _them_ film what would normally be B-roll, and any of it might end up incorporated into the final episode. So once the cameras are on, _Ryan_ needs to be on. He needs to be witty and sharp. He needs to not step in a giant puddle that soaks his ghost-hunting boots all the way up to the hem of his jeans. 

“Shit,” he says, trying to extricate himself.

Shane lopes over and offers him a hand out of the muck, almost guaranteeing that this interaction will make it into the final cut. “You all right there, little guy? I looked over and you were suddenly an extra two inches shorter.”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, though he’s grimacing at the cold water leeching its way into his sock. “This salt marsh is…surprisingly marshy.”

“Hmm. But is it salty?” Before Ryan can stop him, Shane stoops down and dunks his hand into the puddle Ryan just had his boot in. A second later, his fingers are in his mouth.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna throw up,” Ryan says. Beyond the invisible barrier of Mark’s lens, he can see Devon shaking her head and hear TJ’s quietly murmured, “Shane. No.”

“What? This is science, Ryan, science! I just analyzed the evidence and determined that the salt marsh is, indeed, salty. It is _verifiable_. Let’s see you do that with your ghosts.”

“I’m not licking a ghost.”

Shane’s eyes take on an evil glint. “What if the _only way_ —”

“No, no, I see where you’re going with this—”

“—to prove _me_ wrong and to show the _entire_ world—”

“I am not even going to _entertain_ this line of—”

“—Definitively, forever, that ghosts are real—”

“Oh Jesus.”

“—was to _lick a ghost_?”

Ryan sighs. “I would lick a ghost.”

“Cool.” Shane grins. “And just to be clear: I put my clean hand in my mouth and wiped my puddle hand on my pants. So whether the marsh is salty or not will remain—”

“OH FUCK YOU.”

“—Unsolved.”

Ryan holds his breath long enough that they’ll be able to cleanly cut there, if that’s the line they choose to end the scene on. Then he breaks down and laughs until his sides ache. Shane’s laughing too, a little teary-eyed the way he gets when he really loses it.

“Oh man, that was some close-up magic bullshit. What, have you been hanging around the Magic Castle? Practicing your sleight of hand?”

Shane shakes his head. “I’m just naturally gifted in the arcane arts.”

“The art of being an _asshole_ , maybe.”

“Do you want me to really taste it? I’ll taste it, if you want me to.”

“Gee,” Ryan says, “do I want my friend and cohost to get _Giardia_? That’s okay, I’ll pass.” 

As his adrenaline fades, Ryan’s foot begins to remind him that it’s encased in a wet sock and none too pleased about it. “Let’s cut,” he tells Mark. “I think we got some good stuff. Why don’t we take a break while I change my socks and then we can film the intro.”

He starts squelching back to the car, which is parked on the edge of the road, a couple hundred yards away. He can picture the extra pair of socks that he, a genius, stuffed into his backpack this morning. There might also be a Kit Kat in there.

Happily he’s right on both counts. Ryan opens the front passenger-side door and sits sideways there to unlace his boots, one stick of candy wedged between his teeth like a Cuban cigar. He peels off the soaked sock and lets out a long groan of satisfaction. Dry feet and chocolate—is this not bliss?

He’s wriggling his toes into the fresh, dry sock when he sees the smudge. A dark black mark on his right wrist. Mud, he thinks, or chocolate. But when he sets his foot down and tries to use his left thumb to wipe away the stain, it doesn’t come off. He switches from rubbing with the pad of his finger to picking with his nail, but the black smudge doesn’t even flake at the edges. Ryan’s heart is racing nonsensically as he picks up his discarded sock and scours his skin with the damp fabric. 

_“There’s nothing there,” Shane had said._

But there is. There is something there. Not smeared onto his skin, not drawn on as a joke. If anything it looks like it’s _underneath_ his flesh, pressing _up_ , and Ryan’s already shaking in terror, staring at the mark, when it starts to _grow_.

Ryan jerks the sleeve of his jacket back down, tugging it over his wrist. His thoughts are racing, the roar of his blood in his ears nearly deafening, but it’s better like this. Out of sight, out of mind, right? If he can’t see it, then he couldn’t have seen it. The Shane Madej approach to paranormal evidence.

Except he’s worse than Shane; right now, Ryan knows he is being the guy in the zombie movie who gets bit and _doesn’t tell anyone_. He hates that guy.

But then Shane’s shouting, “Ryan, what’s taking so long, buddy? Did you fall in?” Followed a second later, more gently, by, “Ry, you okay?” And in this particular moment, Ryan can kind of see it from Hateful Zombie Guy’s point of view.

He has to be okay. He needs to be okay. So…he’ll just ignore all of this and be okay, then.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he says, moving so fast that he forgets he’s only wearing one boot and steps down in his clean sock onto the damp earth.

* * *

It is a creature of Hellfire and darkness, suckled on the screams of the damned and destined to bring horror, hatred, and pain into the heart of the world, and it is sitting on a colorful rag rug while a six-year-old child with a newly acquired lost-tooth lisp teaches it to read from a literary masterpiece entitled _The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Dream_.

“‘Thleezo wath the evileth of all the Thpace Grithlieth,’” Ryan reads, carefully tracing a finger beneath each word so it could follow along, “‘and the wicked-looking Cloud Cathle wath where he planned all hith evil deedth.’ Thorry,” Ryan adds, glancing up from the page with flushed cheeks. “Ith my tooth.”

It can’t answer him, of course, but it smiles. Then it swiftly grows a new sharp fang from the center of its blue-black gums, plucks it out with a jerk, and holds it up to the gap in Ryan’s front teeth. _You lost your tooth?!_ it thinks of teasing. _I can give you this one. Lemme just pop it in there, like a Lego._

Fortunately, even without the words, Ryan gets the joke. He wheezes with laughter, the air whistling through the gap. He laughs and laughs in pure childish pleasure until he’s slumped against its side, half-asleep.

Ryan is so light in its arms. So fragile. At any time something horrible could happen to damage the tender shell of him—it knows this better than most. It was made to prey on those fears. It both recognizes and resents the irony.

Careful and deliberate, it lays Ryan back on his bed, pulls the covers to his chin. He doesn’t get enough sleep, staying up half the night to play with his Beast, waiting up even on the nights it can’t come, the nights it is forced to hunt and feed elsewhere. Even now he’s stirring again, reaching for it— “No, Beast. Stay…stay.”

It takes his fingers and gives them a squeeze, but then firmly presses them back to the coverlet.

“Come back…” Ryan mumbles, and then he’s out again.

 _Of course I’ll come back_ , it wants to say, _I always come back_. It’s pathetic like that.

So much so that, even now that Ryan’s sunk back into sleep, it doesn’t want to leave. More and more, it’s been doing this—too much. When it should be out fulfilling its purpose with some other, less compelling child, it stays instead in Ryan’s room. It examines his toys and his books. Sometimes, it permits itself to be a silent spectator to his dreams.

But lately, once Ryan’s asleep, the books have been the real draw. Not _The Berenstain Bears Learn Yet Another Sanctimonious Lesson_ ; it’s moved a bit beyond that. It hasn’t told Ryan this—it can’t fucking tell Ryan anything—but its reading ability has been advancing rather more quickly than his. Ryan is obviously a superior example of a human, but it was raised with the thoughts and emotions of the souls of the damned and their demonic masters streaming into its head. _Charlie Brown’s ‘Cyclopedia_ isn’t much of a strain on its intellect.

Ryan obviously has an overly ambitious parent or relative, because he owns a whole series of “Eyewitness Books”: lavishly illustrated guides to innumerable subjects—dinosaurs, space, ancient Egypt, “wonders of the world,” pirates, inventions, the _Titanic_ , ancient Rome, ancient Greece, knights, robots, sharks, rocks and minerals, sports (actually, that one’s kind of boring), the elements, insects, mammals, the human body. It pores over them, and doing so feels like the moment it first flopped its way into the mortal realm and looked up and saw the stars—the spattered reaches of the Milky Way—and the world expanded before it. Vast and strange and so much more than the hot hateful depths it came from.

It pulls _Eyewitness: Human Body_ off the shelf now. Its Beast paws aren’t particularly well suited to turning pages, so it shifts its plump, furry digits into slim, human fingers. This is something it’s been practicing. It gave itself the shivers the first time it tried it: it felt wrong somehow, illicit. And yet at the same time, even now there is a thrill to looking down and seeing itself hold a book in its human hands. 

It made its skin a warm golden-brown, like Ryan’s.

This particular volume in the series it has read several times before, but it keeps coming back to it. It reads slowly, studying diagrams of the lungs and heart, the mouth and throat, the workings of the senses. It’s only when yellow light begins peeking through the window blinds and it hears the crack and curse of Ryan’s father’s toes making the abrupt good morning acquaintance of his nightstand does it realize it has let time get away from it.

It hasn’t returned to Hell for the last three days. It can’t afford to wait another.

It slides the book back onto the shelf, then watches with a feeling of uneasy disgust as the hands it worked so hard on melt back into its furry blue wrists, and its arms dissolve into its torso, and it shrinks down until it’s just a slippery, repulsive thing slithering on its belly across the ground. Outside it plunges into the earth, dives into the crack between worlds and spills out at its masters’ feet. The air feels thick and sulfurous, a hateful miasma that makes it, though mouthless, want to hack and spit and scream.

Then it feels one of the masters’ claws close around it. The tips press in, pierce its sides; the pain is more than it can endure. It thrashes: it can see the end coming, the widening of the master’s jaws. _No! No! Not like this._

This is the death of an animal, a _slug_. Not Ryan’s Beast.

It doesn’t really understand what it’s doing until it sees the master start to shrink. Instead of looking up at the great cave of the master’s jaws, suddenly it is rising above it. The master’s claws pull free of its sides; _it_ is batting the master’s outstretched hand away, _it_ is looming up on its hind legs, _it_ is opening its _own_ jaws and letting out a bellowing roar.

The master takes a step back. The other masters are closing in; it’s still going to die, but that one step brings it so much joy. It grins in the crimson dark. It looks down at itself, at the great big beastly body it’s made, and it licks its lips. It can feel the movement all the way to the back of its throat; feel the breath it’s sucking into its lungs, the deep, satisfying resonance of that one roar. 

_You…dare…_ whisper the masters. _Here in our house? You, the vile afterbirth of our energies? You, who live by our beneficence? YOU DARE?_

It sucks in another breath, then shrinks its muzzle down into something more manageable, less clashing teeth and more nimble tongued.

“Yeah, buddy,” it says. “I fucking dare.”

* * *

He can’t do this. Ryan can’t possibly turn and smile at the camera and say—

“This week on _BuzzFeed Unsolved_ , we investigate the Salinas Valley Witch Shanty, as part of our ongoing investigation into the question, are ghosts real?”

Next to him, Shane is shaking his head. Ryan’s gut is churning and it’s taking every ounce of effort not to strip off his jacket and start clawing at his wrist, but apparently, he’s like…a professional or something? Sort of? He’s dying inside but the words keep coming.

“Now, most people are familiar with the Salinas Valley for either agricultural or literary reasons—”

“It’s Steinbeck country, baby!” Shane says.

“Right. This is the area that novelist John Steinbeck made famous with novels like _Of Mice and Men_ and _East of Eden_. Stuff your eleventh grade English teacher made you read, basically.”

“Did you manage to make it through all of _Of Mice and Men_ , Ryan? It’s like a hundred whole pages, that seems like a lot for you.”

“Yeah, actually I did. And I cried at the end.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, big time. Ugly tears.” Like the ones that are threatening right now! Ahahahaha.

“Well, okay. Mea culpa.”

“All right, now that Shane, who couldn’t make it through the entire _Harry Potter_ series, is done mocking my literary cred, let’s go back to the other thing this area is famous for: agriculture. If you make good life choices and actually eat your vegetables, chances are some of them come from here. Such a large majority of salad greens are produced in this region, it’s known as ‘America’s Salad Bowl.’ Of course, to grow all those crops, you need lots of workers, and in the past, as in today, a great number of those were migrant or seasonal workers.”

This is more comfortable ground: all his research, all these facts. Maybe Shane has a point about the known and the proven and the tangible.

Fuck, he really is losing it.

“But,” he says deliberately, “legend has it that among those workers…was a witch.”

“Which?” says Shane.

“What?”

“Which witch?”

“I’m not doing this,” Ryan says with a strained laugh. He can already see into the future and all the hysterical fan comments: _Is Ryan ACTUALLY mad at Shane? Does he HATE Shane now?_ “Let’s go look inside the shanty.”

“Let’s sing a shanty as we saunter inside the shanty.”

Ryan takes a deep breath and manages a smile as he shakes his head. “Sorry, I shan’t.” 

Shane laughs, and for a brief moment, Ryan feels better.

They cut, and Mark and TJ go into the building ahead of them to set up so they can capture Ryan and Shane actually entering the shack—the shanty. Ryan keeps slipping and almost calling it a shack, because that’s what it looks: an unimposing, actually rather depressing tin and cement shack. So far, the shanty doesn’t scare Ryan so much as make him sad…but then again, he’s a man who’s currently frightened of his own wrist, so maybe his judgment isn’t worth a lot today.

To protect the honor of all his loyal Boogaras, Ryan’s going to do his best not to voice that thought on camera. He’s going to do his best to be a _professional_ , and not vibrate out of his skin because is it just him, or is it taking Mark and TJ an unusually long time to set up, they’re usually so efficient, why is this happening when he’s never wanted to get a shoot over more in his _entire life_?

Something lands on Ryan’s shoulder and he jumps a mile. The something, he realizes—immediately but too late—is Shane’s hand. Ryan turns to him, hackles up—he never quite knows what he’s going to get with Shane, mocking or sympathy. Most of the time, he can appreciate both, but right now his whole body feels like a raw nerve and if Shane jabs at him with his freakishly long fingers he’ll—

“Teej says they’re all set,” Shane says, gently but lacking that certain kind of condescension Ryan knows all too well. “You ready?”

If Ryan keeps working on his stoic, brave nod, maybe one day it will be the tiniest bit convincing. “I mean, it’s a cursed, haunted shack that supposedly belonged to a witch. Why wouldn’t I be ready for that?”

Shane’s mouth twitches into a grin. “All right,” he says, raising his hand-held camera, “into the belly of the beast.”

Ryan’s arm catches on fire.

He’s too stunned by the pain to cry out. He looks down at his right arm, expecting to see it ablaze, skin and muscle cracking and pouring liquid off the bone. But his limbs are intact. And that’s when Ryan realizes that it isn’t his flesh but his mind that is burning. The flames surround him, so bright he can see nothing beyond them but dark shadow shapes, and the taste of charcoal is in his throat and a great weight is atop him feeding the fire past his lips and it is howling and gnashing its teeth—it, the massive monster straddling his belly—and Ryan wants to scream and kick and fight but he just lies there as it buries him in ash and smothers the whole world in a grey forgetful blanket of sorrow and slag.

“No—!”

“No?” says Shane, and Ryan feels like Dorothy stepping out into Oz: color floods his vision, Shane’s brown eyes and blue sweater and white skin and the green-blue marsh and the slash of red graffiti on the side of the shanty where somebody’s spray painted BUTTZ.

No one has moved. Nothing has changed. When he reviews the footage from their GoPros and Shane’s handheld and Mark’s camera later, he knows they’ll be no break in the time code to indicate where Ryan briefly visited some sort of fiery Hell dimension—or finally experienced his first real mental break.

He knows this. And he knows the cameras are all running. And that he has a job to do.

“No,” Ryan says again, around a slightly thick swallow. “I wanna go in first, for once.”

“Ooh.” Shane lets out an appreciative whistle. “My hero.”

“Hey, Shane, guess what?” Ryan says, stepping over the threshold. “Shut up.”

* * *

One cannot speak of moments of silence in Hell. It is never silent in Hell. But when it speaks for the first time, a hush descends. The masters pause. They study it.

 _Interesting,_ one says.

 _Little worm’s found its tongue,_ says another.

 _Tell us why we should let you live, little worm,_ chimes in a third.

_ Tell us why you shouldn’t die for having the gall to appear before us without groveling at our feet. _

_ Tell us why you shouldn’t die even though you hardly contribute to the harvest. _

_ Even though you visit the same house night after night. The same mortal child. _

_ Why are you not feasting upon him, little worm? _

_ Why have you not driven him mad and supped on his screams? _

_ Did you think we didn’t know? _

_ We know. _

_ We know all. _

_ You are ours, little worm. _

_ Our creature. _

_ Why haven’t you broken the boy? _

“Because he’s _special_ ,” it says in a rush.

_ Special to you? _

_ Your special little friend? _

The masters’ tone is mocking.

It questions the wisdom of having made itself this heart when all the organ seems to do is flutter like a panicked bird inside its chest.

“No,” it says, attempting its first scoff. “Special…to the cause. I—I’ve sensed a dark potential in him.”

As unnerving as the masters’ whispers are, their silence is even worse. Surrounding it, the whole circle of them, they watch it with glinting eyes. They are waiting.

“I’ve been… _cultivating_ him,” it says. “Sure, I could make a meal of him today, send him lightly terrorized into adulthood. He’d probably still grow up to be a sinner; I think he’s the sinful type. But if I keep putting the work in, whispering in his ear night after night—teaching him the way _you_ taught _me_ —I think he could really _be_ someone. A, an actor or a serial killer or a…CEO! Maybe even a _politician_! But for sure, someone who inspires misery and sin on a mass scale. And…isn’t that what it’s all about?”

It’s not crazy about the fact that the majority of its first words have been lies, have been slurs against _Ryan_ , but it’s watching the masters’ slow, pleased nods, their wide, eager smiles, and it’s almost jittery with hope and relief. It might be pulling this off? It’s a very dangerous thing, to have hope in Hell, but maybe…

“Listen,” it says, sensing the need to swoop in with a coup de grace, “if you’ve been watching him, then you _know_. There’s just something about this boy. Sometimes…he scares _me_.”

The masters confer. 

Eons pass. Mere seconds. It feels the warped weight of time in Hell, and it remembers the gentle passage of the hours, lying next to Ryan on his colorful rag rug. For another minute of that, it would give anything, anything—

_ It is decided. _

Its heart stops. Literally, it stops: it is for a moment too frightened to remember how the anatomy diagram worked.

_ You will be the whisper in the mortal child’s ear. _

_ The source of corruption that will taint everything he touches. _

_ You will lead him down the dark path. _

_ Under your tutelage, his every sin shall be magnified tenfold. _

_ You will debase him utterly, and when his defilement is complete, you will ensure that he passes his foul infection on to everyone he meets, until the world descends into fire and chaos. _

“Yeah, cool, sounds great,” it says. “When do I start?”

The masters grin. _Not so fast._

As one they move on it, hold it down, mark its new flesh and something deeper than its flesh. _Your eyes shall be our eyes, your ears shall be our ears_ , they whisper.

_ Don’t forget who you belong to. _

_ Never forget to whom you are bound. _

* * *

“So Mama Darwell didn’t start out with evil intentions,” Ryan explains, because he’s sticking to the script, sticking to the script, sticking to the script. “She was a midwife and a healer to the people working the farms in these parts. But she became so frustrated and horrified at the way she and many more of the migrant workers were treated by the landowners, she decided to take matters into her own hands.”

“Or her own…wand?”

Ryan lets out a huff. “No, I’m talking about real magic curses, like the dark flip side of the voodoo rituals Bloody Mary told us about. Not _Harry Potter_.”

“ _Harry Potter_ has curses,” Shane points out.

“Jeez, for someone who only read the first five books, you talk a _lot_ about _Harry Potter_.”

“It’s part of the cultural lexicon. Tell me more about ‘real magic curses,’” Shane says, air-quoting like an asshole.

 _Well, there might be one on me right now_ , Ryan thinks about saying. If he did, Shane might actually laugh himself to death.

They’re going to do VO for Ryan’s description of Mama Darwell’s curses, so they can use cool graphics of the various plagues she supposedly caused: farm owners who mistreated their workers finding their fields withered and black, while surrounding crops belonging to more just—or less inherently cruel—owners flourished. Cool stuff like that. For now they explore the shack. There is, kind of by definition, not very much of it: one large room and a little lean-to. And thank god: if Ryan had to tour something the size of Waverly right now, he doesn’t think he could handle it. He feels a flash of empathy for Shane making it all the way through Eastern State Penitentiary with bad hot dog belly.

Though honestly, if Ryan could take care of whatever is wrong with him by popping a squat here in Mama Darwell’s haunted shanty, he’d do it right now. On camera.

This in spite of the fact that the ground is covered by debris: broken glass and beer cans and a pile of warped and rotten boards, black with wet. The remains of a twisted metal bed frame rest against one wall, and as Mark, filming them, backs up toward it, he catches his foot on a rusted out old kettle and is only saved from the kind of accident BuzzFeed HR has to hear about by TJ’s quick reflexes. They reset, and after a swift discussion to which Ryan contributes only agreeable nods, decide that Mark will be filming the rest of this segment from a stationary position. 

“This place is so small I don’t think it will matter,” TJ says. And Shane looks at Ryan and says, “I don’t believe in curses, but honestly, I hope Mama Darwell cursed the hell out of everyone she worked for.”

“Same,” says Mark. “Okay, rolling.”

Ryan gives Shane a nod. Even though his brain is currently melting, he knows a good line when he hears one, and Shane knows how to read Ryan when Ryan’s on location but already editing the episode in his head. He repeats the line for Mark’s sharper lens: “I don’t believe in curses, but honestly, I hope Mama Darwell cursed the hell out of everyone she worked for.”

Ryan nods. “Even before locals’ fear of this place made them leave it to rot, I can’t believe these were particularly humane living conditions. And this would have been _luxurious_ compared to what some of the other workers had.”

As Ryan says “luxurious,” he stoops down to pick up the kettle that attacked Mark—it ought to provide visual interest. Only after he’s lifted it by the handle does he realize it’s oddly heavy—the marsh seeping inside, maybe? Then something black and slimy heaves itself over the kettle’s lip. Ryan yelps, letting the kettle fall. The black thing slides off into the bracken, just missing the toe of Ryan's boot as he dances back.

“What? Did you see a ghost?” Shane asks.

“No—just the most enormous slug.”

“A _slug_?” says Shane.

“Maybe it was a snake,” Ryan says. He’s so keyed up he feels dizzy with it—adrenaline and so much sustained fear, he really might faint or have an aneurysm or something. “It was huge.”

Shane makes a weird face, even weirder to apprehend in the dim light. Then he turns his gaze down to the ground. “A plague of slugs would be a pretty good curse,” he says. “Biblical, but with a modern twist.”

“Gross,” Ryan says. He shines his light on the far wall, which is covered with graffiti. Whoever came inside the shanty showed more pride in their work than Mr. BUTTZ from outside: the paint twists in thick black squiggles, three whole lines of text, like some arcane language. The “letters” swim in front of Ryan’s eyes, and for a second, he’s almost convinced he can understand them, like when he looks at German and sometimes thinks he can read German.

But in actual fact, he speaks German just as capably as Shane does—which is to say, not. And these markings are meaningless, simply some wannabe-Banksy’s pretentious tag. Nothing more than black smudges.

Ryan’s wrist burns. 

He clutches at it with his left hand, trying to smother the flames. Still the images crash over him: there’s something, there’s a thing on his chest, and it’s smothering him, burning him, sucking all the color out of the world, taking his life and his memories and the very breath in his lungs, he's struggling to breathe, to give breath to his words, his pleading— _No, don’t! Please don’t! Come back, come back, come back—_

Ryan drops his flashlight. The clatter as it hits the ground is very loud. 

“Ry? You okay?” Shane sounds like he’s incredibly far away. He’s looking at Ryan, eyes wide and intense and serious, like he almost never is, certainly not while ghost-hunting, and then his gaze flicks to Ryan’s wrist. Like he knows something.

_“There’s nothing here,” Shane had said._

But there is. There _is_ something there. Ryan’s heart is pounding, Ryan’s brain is melting, and he’s got at least three (3) cameras pointed at him as he locks eyes with Shane and rolls the sleeve of his jacket up his wrist.

Ryan doesn’t look. He’s afraid to, but he also doesn’t _need_ to, because he sees Shane see. Shane goes pale—pal _er_ , which should be impossible—and his mouth moves like he’s going to say something, but no words come out.

He looks at Ryan, and he is afraid.

Ryan feels like he’s going to faint.

He’s _not_ crazy but something _is_ wrong and Shane _knows_ and what the _fuck_ , Shane—

“Uh, guys?” TJ says. “You gonna say something? That’s kind of the point of the show—for you to say things.”

Shane’s still looking at him, looking at him with the most intense expression Ryan has ever seen on Shane’s face. He holds Ryan’s gaze and he nods—slowly, assuredly, until Ryan nods back. Like they’re locking palms in a handshake. Promising something to each other.

_Later, soon, I swear—_

Then Shane turns to the camera and starts spouting bullshit.

Ryan bends over to retrieve his flashlight, pausing on his way back up to carefully straighten out his sleeve. Then he makes himself drop it, let it go, push it out of his mind. He looks up toward the light, and he smiles.

* * *

Earthside again, it lies for a long time on a patch of wet grass. Consciously or otherwise, it has gone back to being a bear cub, curling in on itself, a small brown ball of fur. It stays squatted on its haunches for a time, until eventually it gathers the strength to raise its head. Its eyes seek out the stars.

They’re all wrong. The constellations have shifted: Ursa Major has flipped on its axis, Pisces has risen, and Pegasus has centered itself in the sky.

It’s been gone for months.

Maybe years.

It takes off running.

Shedding its useless stubby legs, stretching its limbs without thought into something firmer and faster, it races to Ryan’s window. It grows strong, sturdy claws and slides them into the gap between the window and the frame and thrusts up, heart pounding as it heaves itself over the sill and tumbles inside.

Stupid: anybody could be in this room; this room could _be_ anybody’s room, now. And here it is, leaping without looking, feeling the pulse of terror, sickly sweet, radiating out from the person who, across the room, is jolting out of bed.

“Ryan,” it breathes.

Ryan opens his mouth. He’s going to scream; it can sense it. On impossibly swift shadow feet, it darts across the room and crushes a hand to Ryan’s mouth. He’s so much bigger than he was—seven, now? Eight?—but still tiny, especially under the huge hand it’s apparently currently sporting at the end of its wrist. In its haste, it’s twisted itself into some sort of horrific half-thing with slender, articulated human hands covered in rough fur. It tries to calm itself, assume a less appalling shape, but Ryan is squirming in its grip, eyes wide with panic. He’s so frightened his fear is stabbing into it like forceful injections of a potent drug.

“No, no, Ryan—” It takes another deep, deliberate breath. In its mind it pictures the map of the human anatomy: the delicate tapestry of veins, the lungs like wings around the heart, the layered beauty of muscle and skin and bone. Let itself sink into that, it thinks—slowly, just—

It hears Ryan let out a gulp, a gasp, and tentatively it lets its palm slide away from his tear-stained face.

“Sorry,” it says, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t want…”

“What…” Ryan croaks. His eyes track over it. It lowers its eyes too: there’s a humanish torso beneath it, humanish limbs, small and delicate. It’s made itself a boy’s body. It hopes it hasn’t literally made itself _Ryan’s_ body, but it suspects it’s skated a little too close.

Their eyes meet again. “Who are you?” Ryan says, on the exhale of a shaky breath.

For a horrible moment, it forgets every word of its hard-won speech.

“It’s me,” it says finally, “your Beast.”

It closes its eyes when it sees the smile that breaks across Ryan’s face. An illogical response, yes, but it doesn’t want the masters to see it, this smile that Ryan’s been saving for it, that is for it alone.

“You came back!” Suddenly Ryan’s arms are around its body, squeezing tight. For a second it stiffens like it’s being attacked— _the masters pinned its arms, they pinned its legs and held their razor-sharp claws to its throat_ —but Ryan’s hands are soft, his heart fluttering in his chest. The emotion wafting off of him isn’t fear anymore. “I was starting to think I’d imagined you. Everyone said I made you up—”

It pulls back sharply. “Ryan, you can’t tell people about me, not _anyone_ —”

“I know, Jason and Travis made fun of me. They said only babies believe in monsters. So I asked Travis how come Mia said Brad said he got scared when they watched _Tremors_ at Henry’s sleepover and wouldn’t get down off the couch even to go to the bathroom because he thought the giant worms were going to come up through the floor and eat him, because giant worms are monsters. And then Travis pulled my hair and pushed me in a puddle and Jason kicked mud on me and Travis stole my Power Ranger.”

“And where does Travis live?” it asks, thinking: _giant worm, check_.

That bright, brilliant smile again—but this time, it can’t bring itself to look away. “Are you going to scare Travis?”

It nods solemnly. “I am going to make Travis so frightened, so petrified with terror and fear and soul-deep existential despair, that he straight-up pees himself.”

In the delighted fit of his laughter, Ryan slaps his own chest so hard he tumbles backward onto the mattress.

“I’m so happy you’re back.” Ryan reaches back up and closes his fingers around its wrist, tugging. Gingerly, it stretches out beside him on the bed. Ryan rolls his head to look at it. “And you can talk now! And it looks like—can you do a whole bunch more shapes?”

Slowly, it nods. “I had to go away because I had a lot to learn,” it says, and for the first time in its short history of having a voice, its voice cracks. “But I understand things better now.”

Flipping over onto his side, Ryan makes a careful study of its face. It has no idea what this face looks like, what these strange new features can be made to conceal or will give away. 

“But do you promise you won’t leave again?” Ryan grasps wildly for its hand. “You can’t just leave without telling me!”

“I would never willingly leave you,” it says, hoping Ryan won’t discern the distinction. “I’m your Beast.”

Ryan grins at that, fingers squeezing. “You don’t look really like much of a Beast right now,” he says, laughing. Then his expression turns thoughtful: “Maybe we need a new name for you.”

The organs it so carefully crafted seemingly serve no real purpose except to flutter uselessly in its chest when Ryan says things like that. _Yes_ , it’s about to say, _yes, yes, please—_ but then Ryan rolls over and bounces off the bed.

“We can think about it! Come look at my pirate ship—it’s got over three hundred pieces!”

As it gets up and trails after him, it realizes that _this_ is now its small but exalted purpose: to follow Ryan wherever he goes.

_You will debase him utterly, and when his defilement is complete…_

“Here,” Ryan says, handing it a scowling yellow figurine with an eyepatch and a peg leg. “Do you wanna be the bad guy?”

It looks at him: all soft brown eyes and cowlicked hair, sitting crosslegged on the rug in his cowboy-print pajamas. Smiling up at it like it doesn’t frighten him, like he shouldn’t be running far, far away.

“Maybe later,” it says.

* * *

_Later_ , Shane had promised—sworn silently and probably not just in Ryan’s imagination. But _later_ isn’t coming soon enough. The rest of the shoot is agony, and then there’s the drive back toward town, and trying to explain to TJ, Mark, and Devon why, for the first time in history, neither he nor Shane wants anything to eat or drink, they’re just so very tired, yawn yawn, really want to go back to the motel and hit the sheets. It’s not Ryan’s best performance, and Shane is silent and unhelpful, so now probably their friends and coworkers think that they’re having a torrid affair or something. Ryan’s spine prickles a little at the thought, but compared to his _arm being on fire_ , it’s nothing; he can’t really bring himself to care.

Shane stands beside him in front of their room’s door, his posture even worse than usual, as Ryan fumbles the key with shaking hands. He can’t get the dumb little card to insert the right way no matter how many times he flips it over—it’s worse than a USB stick—and finally Shane reaches down and takes it from. Their fingers brush; Shane sucks in a breath like he’s going to start _weeping_ or something; and then he’s skulking inside as if he were walking to his own execution.

As soon as the door clicks shut, he stops and turns around. “How much do you remember?”

“Huh?” says Ryan.

“What do you remember?” asks Shane, in that same small, dead voice.

Ryan wants to scream. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he says, screaming a little.

Shane steps forward into Ryan’s personal space bubble, which Ryan is, reasonably, feeling somewhat protective of right now. He reaches for Ryan’s wrist, slowly, telegraphing his movements, and Ryan responds by jerking his hand back. He cradles his wrist against his chest, watching Shane, warily.

Oh my god: is he afraid of _Shane_ now?

“Please,” Shane says softly. His shoulders are hunched, like he’s trying to make himself small. “Let me see it. I need to see.”

Ryan hesitates a moment, then thrusts his arm back out. He tries to tell himself he’s being brave, but he turns his head away.

He feels Shane’s long fingers curl around his wrist. _Shane’s_ trembling too, and that is terrifying. That is truly terrifying. It’s so awful, like a horrific accident, that Ryan has to look; he has to turn back and see the wobble in Shane’s lower lip as he examines the big black brand that’s appeared on Ryan’s skin. It’s a bold and vivid black, impossible to deny or ignore. It looks witchy and alien to Ryan’s eyes—although also, sort of, like a drunk person’s attempt at the letter ‘E.’

It is emphatically _not_ supposed to be on Ryan’s arm, is the point.

“I don’t understand,” says Shane, which like…no kidding, buddy. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“What _is_ happening?” Ryan can hear a high-pitched hysteria creeping into his voice, but also thinks that the fact that he’s forming words at all is pretty impressive. “Am I being haunted by the ghost of an angry tattoo artist? _Shane?_ What’s going on?”

Shane swallows heavily. He lifts his head and looks at Ryan, searching his face for— _what_? Some enigmatic bullshit. Ryan’s never wanted to punch him quite this badly, and he’s wanted to punch him before a _lot_.

“You _don’t_ remember,” Shane says, cryptically putting unknown pieces together in his own head, and Ryan yanks his hand away, bubbling over: “No! For fuck’s sake! What the fuck are you talking about?”

Shane bows his head. “Listen,” he starts to say, “Ryan…”

That’s when Ryan notices the black slugs oozing out from under the bed.

He lets out a yelp. There have to be hundreds of them and they keep coming and coming and any further sounds Ryan was planning to make get stuck in his throat. He flaps his hands frantically at Shane, who turns around, horror-movie slow, just as the wave of black nightmare slugs draw level with his boot heels.

Shane doesn’t scream. Shane says, “You fucks!”

Then the slugs are climbing. Not up Shane’s leg, which is what Ryan in his utterly useless paralysis had been fearing and expecting. Instead the wave of shimmery black bodies crashes in on itself, forming a dark, twisting column that churns up toward the ceiling, then surges outward, gaining mass, growing and growing until there’s an enormous black slug monster towering over Shane, and Ryan unfreezes long enough to shout, “Look out!” before the thing amasses a huge heavy arm out of its own body and uses it to smack Shane clear across the room.

There’s a horrible sound as his back hits the wall, and an even more horrible silence that follows when he collapses to the floor, unmoving.

It’s then that Ryan does scream, a deep-chested, animal bellow. The black shape has no face, but Ryan can tell when it turns toward him, the individual creatures wriggling and writhing as it churns in his direction. Ryan has nothing—no holy water, no salt, scarcely the strength to stand. Like an idiot, he raises his fists. He’s terrified but he’s not a _coward_ ; he refuses to go down without a fight.

“COME AT ME, BRO!” he shouts, because he’s more than a little hysterical at this point, and if this were a bit, something they were filming, it would be a funny thing to say, except it isn’t a bit, and Shane is a still dark shape on the floor, and Ryan’s crying as he winds up for a hard, hopeless swing, and then something’s scooping him up, shoving him out of the way. 

Ryan hits the wall on a stumble. He rolls, arms still raised, shoulders thudding against the plaster. His vision swims. He blinks his eyes open again and when he does there are _two_ massive creatures battling it out in the middle of the motel room. The slug-monster is grappling with something with enormous furred arms, and as Ryan watches, stunned, the second creature extends a huge hairy paw and slashes it in two with its dagger-sharp claws. 

Slugs spatter and splat across the carpet. Black ichor hits the wall in a sizzling arc. Ryan’s nostrils fill with a scent like rotting eggs; through watery eyes he watches as the hairy-armed creature stabs down again and again into the disintegrating black whirlpool of squirming bodies. The creature’s chest is heaving, it’s panting and cursing, and with angry, emphatic stomps it crunches its feet down again and again, spraying noxious slug guts under the heels of its brown ghost-hunting boots.

Then it turns and looks at Ryan over one massive hairy shoulder. 

“Ryan, help me out here,” Shane says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! Dun dun dun...
> 
> Title, inevitably, from Hozier.
> 
> One line stolen directly from Calvin and Hobbes, which, given the context of this story, is either appropriate or terrifying.
> 
> Meanwhile, Devon's story about the Bay is directly from my own childhood. Sleep well, kids!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to Siria and fiveyearmission for betaing and encouragement. <3
> 
> Disclaimer: This is still not real.
> 
> Content warning: There are some jerks in this chapter, and some of those jerks briefly use some ableist and homophobic language. (It's all in the mall scene, if you want to skip.)
> 
> And yes, I upped the chapter count from 3 to 4, because I'm trying to be real with myself. These boys are very chatty.

If Ryan only looks at Shane’s face, then everything is fine. Normal.

Shane’s face looks like Shane’s face: open, mutable, handsome in a confusing way. And Shane’s voice sounds exactly like Shane’s voice—soft, with just the barest hint of a midwestern drawl—only now it’s a little more emphatic than usual. His tone is firm, commanding, authoritative. It is not the voice of a man who has mysteriously sprouted huge, hairy, and sharply clawed arms, or whose soft grey hoodie has ripped apart at the seams and is clinging to his now disproportionately skinny chest like a vest.

“You look like the Hulk,” Ryan says, because that is the only coherent thought he currently has.

“ _Ryan_ ,” Shane says sharply. “Help me. We can’t let any of them get away.”

Okay. Right. That makes sense. As much sense as anything else—and, even given the mind-numbingly horrible context, stomping slugs is actually pretty satisfying. He and Shane work side by side, their respective boots rising and falling like pistons. _Boot Bros!_ Ryan thinks, somewhat hysterically. He grinds his heel down again and again, only stumbling when he catches a glimpse of Shane reaching out with his long sharp claws and impaling a slug that’s trying to escape up the wall by the window.

“Wha,” he says.

“I’ll explain,” Shane says, distractedly. He squishes one more, two more, a final slug, then gives the room an evaluating glance. “I promise,” he says, before disappearing into the bathroom.

When seconds later he comes back out, his arms are his arms again, scrawny and pale. His fingers are his own knobby-knuckled fingers, and he’s holding a plastic cup in them. “Here,” he says, thrusting the cup in front of Ryan’s face. “Spit in it.”

“You— _you_ spit in it!” Ryan says reflexively.

Shane shakes the cup in frustration. “It has to be your spit,” he says. “Mine isn’t _real_.”

“What?” Ryan says, for what feels like the thousandth time, but at a loss for what else to do, he dips his head and expectorates into the cup. 

“More,” Shane says.

Glaring at Shane, bewildered, Ryan hawks up another loogie. “What the fuck,” he says, as Shane walks over to the wall with his cup of spit. “What the _fuck_ , Shane,” he says again, as Shane dips his fingers into Ryan’s spittle and starts using it to draw on the wallpaper, like a kid making the world’s worst finger painting. 

“I didn’t switch hands this time, I promise,” Shane says, offering him a small smile. Ryan pointedly doesn’t laugh. There’s an awkwardly long pause. “Right,” Shane says, and returns to his work: another broad, sweeping stroke, and then he’s stepping back, looking satisfied.

Ryan notices for the first time that Shane’s left forearm is bleeding. ( _How could I have seen it_ , Ryan thinks dizzyingly, _under all that fur?_ ) Shane notices him noticing. “Don’t worry,” he says. His smile looks fake to Ryan, plasticky. “The blood’s not real, either. Not exactly.”

“AAUUUUUUUGH,” Ryan says, because that’s it, he’s got nothing left. “Shut up, Shane! Shut up! Shut up and _start talking_ , I swear to god—”

Shane’s creepy attempt at a smile cracks. His expression goes disconcertingly serious, flat. “Right,” he mutters. He walks over to the far bed and sinks down onto the mattress. He looks at Ryan. “Maybe you should sit down.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me what to do!” Ryan shoots back. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Fold them? Wring them? Wring Shane’s _neck_? “What the fuck! What the fuck, Shane!” Ryan feels his throat convulse, hears the raw hitch of his breath. He’s tearing up again. “What the fuck are you?”

Shane folds forward. Long arms on long legs—it used to be hilarious, joking about Shane’s insane cryptid body. Now the thought turns Ryan’s stomach. 

Shane clutching his head in his hands, ruffling his mussed and wild hair. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Ryan.” He looks up, peeking out through his fingers, then says in a small voice: “You really don’t remember me? Not even now?”

Ryan’s legs feel like water. Maybe he should have sat before, but he doesn’t want to give Shane the satisfaction now. “I remember that yesterday you were my friend, and now you’re…”

Shane’s skinny shoulders are trembling. Ryan can see the slim, rounded bones of them beneath Shane’s pale skin, because Shane’s shirt is tattered and torn, because Shane somehow got up from a spine-shattering injury and grew enormous bear-arms, sprouted _claws_ to fight a monster that he _recognized_ , just like he recognized the mark on Ryan’s wrist, because he knew what it was, he’s known all along, and he’s been lying to Ryan, he is a _liar_.

Ryan’s fists clench. “What. Are. You.” Shane has the _nerve_ to sit there all droopy and pathetic and it’s all a lie, it’s a trick to fool Ryan, because Ryan _is_ a fool, all this time he’s let himself be fooled, conned, mocked— “Tell me, right now. And if you try to make another joke or lie to me again I swear to god I’ll—”

“Your Beast,” says Shane quietly.

“ _What_?”

“I’m your Beast,” says Shane, a note of pleading in his voice. Like he’s waiting for Ryan to show some sign of sympathy or recognition, but he’s not going to get it, because he’s a _monster_ , a thing, and _worse_ , a thing that pretended to be Ryan’s friend, that almost made Ryan— well.

“ _No_ ,” Ryan says, emphatically. “No. You’re not my _anything_. You, you’re—”

“Evil?” says Shane. There’s something alien in how still he’s holding himself, placid as glass. His tone has gone from begging to unnervingly flat. “Yes,” he says simply.

Ryan really doesn’t mean to, but he does sit then—on the floor, not the bed. It’s sit or fall, and whatever part of his brain is still operational has just enough dignity left to decide to sit.

“Evil,” he says. “A—”

“Demon,” says Shane, in that same emotionless voice that is not his voice. “Yes. The lowest of low demons, from the very bottom of Hell’s hierarchy, but still a demon. Yes.”

“F-fuck you,” says Ryan. “No. _No_.”

“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” the thing across from him says dryly, sounding more like Shane now, and that’s almost _worse_.

“You don’t get to tell me you’re a demon and then quote _Star Wars_ at me!” Ryan shouts.

“Oh, is that a rule?” Shane says. “I’m sorry, let me check my handbook—”

“YOU DON’T GET TO MAKE JOKES!” Ryan says. “NO JOKES FOR DEMONS!”

“Well then I _retire_ from demonhood!” says Shane, standing up and spreading his arms, towering over him. “Okay, Ryan? I choose my career in comedy.”

“Stop it,” Ryan says. “Stop being funny. Stop being _Shane_.” He has a sudden, hopeful thought. “Are you—are you possessing him?”

“Oh do you mean am _I_ , the horrible evil demon, just taking poor innocent Shane out for a spin?” the thing practically spits. “Nuh-uh, I’m Shane all the way down, baby! Shane through and through.”

He drops to his knees in front of Ryan, which thanks to his height means he’s still looming. “What you see is what you get, it’s what’s always been here to see. You just couldn’t. Ryan…” It looks at him seriously, _gently_ , the manic energy of a moment ago gone. “When did you first notice that mark on your arm? Please Ryan, this is important—”

“I’m supposed to trust _you_ to tell me what’s important?” Ryan sputters.

“ _Please_ ,” Shane says.

“Yesterday.” Ryan feels like the word’s been tugged out of him—some other evil demon power of Shane’s, probably, hidden behind the desperation in his voice as he pleads with Ryan like that.

“ _Yesterday_?”

“Yeah, yesterday! At the McDonald’s. Just a flash of it. And then _you_ said it was nothing, you asshole.”

Shane shakes his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, _that_ doesn’t?”

“Let me see it again.”

“No,” says Ryan, petulantly.

Shane waits, just looking at him. Before, Ryan would have given them even odds in a battle of stubborn will, but right now he’s too desperate for answers. With an annoyed eye roll, he thrusts his arm back out.

Shane takes his wrist. And Ryan shivers again, the way he did in the parking lot of the McDonald’s. It’s probably one of Shane’s evil demon powers, making Ryan react like this to something so small and stupid. 

Shane’s thumb skates over the black ridges of the symbol. Ryan hates that he has feeling there, like those dark lines are really a part of him. “It’s intact,” he says. “It shouldn’t be visible if it’s intact.”

“What is it?” asks Ryan, and immediately a thousand horrible possibilities present themselves. It’s a curse mark, like Cain’s. A death mark, like in _Treasure Island_.

A demon’s signature, _Shane’s_ signature, from when Ryan, unwittingly, unknowingly, sold him his soul.

“It’s a memory charm,” Shane says, and Ryan experiences a second of blissful relief.

Swiftly supplanted by more confusion: “Huh?”

“A memory charm and a binding,” Shane says, as if that clarifies anything. “And it’s still active, which explains why you don’t remember. But not why it’s suddenly visible, or how _they_ were able to find you. Unless they managed to find _me_?” Shane drops Ryan’s wrist and twists himself around like a pretzel. “Do you see anything on the back of my neck?”

“Freckles,” Ryan says. Then: “Shane, you need to back this _way up_. Am I missing _memories_? Did something fuck with my head?” Ryan thought he had already checked off all the horrifying things that could be happening, but then there’s…well, that. He swallows heavily. “Did _you_ fuck with my head?”

Slowly, Shane turns himself back around. “Yeah,” he says, on a sharp exhale. “Yeah, I did. But only because I had to. Only because you made me.”

Ryan feels like his chest is being crushed, like his own ribs are stabbing him. “I don’t believe you.” If he survives this—whatever _this_ even _is_ —he’s going to have to _bathe_ in holy water. He’s going to have to go to Father Thomas for a blessing every day for a year. Maybe he’ll become a priest?

He certainly feels a righteous holy spark in him as he snarls, “Fucking prove it, demon.”

Shane flinches back. “Fine,” he says. “You asked for it.” And before Ryan can react to _that_ vaguely ominous bullshit, a sharp claw is sprouting from Shane’s index finger, and Shane is using it to carve a deep, painful slice through the stained flesh of Ryan’s right wrist.

Blood roars in Ryan’s ears like ocean waves crashing against a rocky shore.

The last thing he sees before he passes out is Shane reaching out his arms to catch him.

* * *

“Okay, open your eyes,” it says.

Ryan’s eyelashes flutter open. Then he bursts out laughing.

“That good?” it says, picking up the black lacquer hand mirror Ryan stole from his mother. It admires its handiwork: the bright, carrot-red hair, ghost-white skin, and riot of freckles do make for a striking combination. 

“You look like one of those creepy old dolls,” Ryan says.

“Raggedy Andy? Howdy Doody?” It turns its head slightly too far around on its neck. “Ryan, don’t you want to be my friend?”

Ryan covers his own mouth with his hand to muffle his shrieks of laughter. “Are you sure we can’t go scare Jake?”

It’s rocked by a pang: half-hunger, half-anxiety. “Yes, I’m sure. Ryan, we can’t—”

“—Ever let anyone find out about you, blah blah blah, I know, yeesh.” Then as easily as Ryan slid on this cloak of annoyance, he shrugs it off again. His expression turns quizzical. “What’s this one?” he asks, pointing at its face.

It doesn’t remember deliberately shifting, but it does that sometimes—slips. It lifts the mirror, frowning, so that’s how it first sees this face: sporting a somewhat confused grimace. It’s not much of a face. Well, size-wise it is: it must have kept some of its Howdy Doody-ish proportions. But in its distraction, it let its hair turn a generic brown and its face just looks like…an ordinary human face. A boy of about ten, because when it’s around Ryan it tends to make itself look around Ryan’s age. Brown eyes, like Ryan’s. Otherwise average features, not as interesting as Ryan’s. It honestly isn’t sure what it was going for with this one. 

It offers Ryan a shrug, then shifts itself to look like Shaq, if Shaq were nine.

Ryan likes Shaq a lot, for some reason.

Yet Ryan seems less than impressed. “Not a real person,” he says. “You shouldn’t do me and you shouldn’t do other people who are real.”

It feels itself lose its grip on Shaq. “Isn’t that the game?”

“This isn’t a _game_ ,” Ryan says with an eye roll. “I mean, I like that game. But that’s not what we’re doing right _now_.”

“You said you wanted me to do faces!” it says. _It_ had wanted to watch a movie; Ryan had been given his parents’ old TV/VCR combo for his tenth birthday, and it’s been a little obsessed ever since. Movies are like dreams, but actually _coherent_!

“Yeah, faces for _you_ ,” says Ryan. “You know, for The Plan.”

“Oh,” it says. It still isn’t sure about The Plan. The Plan seems like asking for trouble, and since it’s already trying to pull a fast one on the full forces of Hell, it feels like anything more may be pushing it little.

But of course, it can’t tell Ryan that.

“Sure,” it says. “The Plan.” Ryan looks at it expectantly. “I’m not sure it’s really going to matter, though,” it continues. “What I look like.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. So long as I look human—”

“It does, it _does_ matter!” Ryan interrupts. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re in disguise the whole time, ‘cause then you won’t have a good time.”

“I’m always in disguise, Ryan.” It meant to say it gently, but it doesn’t really come out that way.

It doesn’t matter: Ryan just glares at it stubbornly, his arms folded. “There’s a _difference_ ,” he says. “I can tell when you have to work really hard to keep a shape and when you’re _comfortable_. I _know_ you. You’re my best friend, dummy.”

“ _You’re_ a dummy,” it says.

“ _Nyah_ ,” says Ryan, sticking his tongue out.

“ _Nyah_ ,” it says, sticking its tongue out back.

They both devolve into giggles, and it savors the feeling of the laughter vibrating in the hollow of its chest. Then all at once there’s a weight behind its eyes, a pressure. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” it murmurs quickly, and watches in relief as Ryan immediately goes stiff across from him.

And continues to watch as, a moment later, Ryan’s shoulders relax, his head tips back, and he smiles at it, slow and mean.

“I don’t think you’re listening to me,” he says. “I said I want you to pick a…a _damn_ body and do The Plan with me. I’m sick of being stuck in my room all the time like a _loser_. There’s a whole world out there, you know. It should be ours! Anything we want—you and me, we could just take it. Like, like robbing a bank is totally a thing we could be doing…”

Ryan’s cheeks are flushing from the effort; fortunately, “They’re gone,” it says.

“Sorry,” Ryan says, letting out a huge breath. “Did we fool them? Was I scary?”

“Very scary,” it lies. 

Ryan does try. Ever since it first suggested that they might have fun playing a little game: one where Ryan could pretend to be a monster, just like it. _You’re not a monster, you’re my Beast_. Right, well. Its bosses can’t know that. Its bosses need to think that both it and Ryan are monstrous and mean and awful, and that most of the time they’re together is spent doing monstrous and mean and awful things. Which wouldn’t be fun at all. Do the Brotherhood of Mutants ever actually look like they’re having a good time? (Ryan had emphatically shaken his head.) Right. So instead, if they just make it _look_ like they’re being total jerks whenever its bosses check in on them, then the rest of the time they can actually do whatever they want. So they have to trick them. _Like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi tricked the cobras?_ (Ryan had watched the Chuck Jones cartoon at school a few weeks prior. The snakes had given him nightmares, dreams so pungent they’d invaded its mind and even fattened its belly before it could shake Ryan awake, then transform into a chittering mongoose who’d darted and danced around the room, hissing at all the shadows, until he was calm and laughing again.) Yes, it had had to promise, just like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

Unless it’s wrong. Unless all its careful experimentation and acquisition of data still brought it to the incorrect conclusions, and its masters _do_ watch them all the time, and don’t just steal into its senses when it can feel it, the way it’s trained itself to feel it. Unless the masters are just toying with them, with it, and that everything it has carefully built will one day soon be ripped away. The things they will do to it, then. To Ryan.

Ryan, who loves to play at being monstrous and mean and awful—but who nine times out of ten still breaks, and smiles, and laughs. Who is _good_ —the kind of good it can viscerally feel, waves of sweet honey-warmth. Even after all these years, none of its own vile inky taint clings to him. What a meal they’d make of him now, Ryan—its brave little mongoose—who doesn’t realize that the cobras they’ve so far managed to trick are going to keep coming. 

That it’s _its_ fault that they know Ryan’s name and Ryan’s scent and where he sleeps.

And yet that’s only the start of the things it’s done to Ryan.

“Did you mean it?” it asks now, after too long a hesitation—Ryan, looking at its face, had begun to frown. “Do you feel trapped in here?” _With me_ , it is too cowardly to add.

Ryan’s scoff is immediate. “No, of course not,” he says. “But, y’know, I worry _you_ might, kinda.”

They both have lives outside this room. Of course. Ryan has school and basketball and time with his family. And it has to hunt and feed, to pay courtesy visits to Hell once in a while. In its case, it’s true that these are merely things it _has_ to do to ensure that it can come back here. Its visits aren’t just at night now. It’s begun coming earlier and earlier every day, reading Ryan’s books and watching Ryan’s TV with the volume turned down low, waiting for him to come home from school or from practice. It will spend whole lazy weekends locked away with him while Jake pounds on the door and begs his big brother to come outside and play. It’s there when Ryan finally drifts off for his too-few hours of sleep. In its weakness, more and more often, it’s still there when he wakes up.

Ryan is a bad and reluctant liar, and it knows he would tell it if he didn’t want it there, if he needed a break. But Ryan doesn’t always know what’s good for him.

“We should do The Plan,” it says. “Tomorrow.”

Ryan beams at him, then pumps his arm like he’s celebrating some sort of unfathomable sporting victory. “Yessssss. This is going to be so cool.” He bounces back onto the bed. “We really need to pick you a face then, though!”

Ryan hands it the lacquered hand mirror. For a moment it just sits and stares at itself. It’s possible it’s experiencing some performance anxiety. This feels like a test it could fail: what if it can’t create a face that’s original enough, cool enough, _right_ for Ryan? This was much easier when it could simply model itself on an action figure or a stuffed Paddington toy. It was easier when it didn’t have to try to be a _person_.

It flips through faces, childlike versions of people it knows Ryan likes, that he might like to look at: George Clooney? Bruce Lee? Will Smith? Marty McFly? Obi-Wan Kenobi? It tries not to be too obvious about it, to change or obscure their features, but Ryan’s not going for it. “Stop trying so hard!”

“It _is_ hard. Stop pressuring me!”

“Only ‘cause you’re overthinking it.” Ryan’s eyes get a glint to them.

“Wait—” it starts to say. But by then Ryan’s leapt on it, bowled it over onto the rug. Ryan is warm and squirmy. His chest is vibrating with laughter. It feels loose and liquid beneath him as Ryan grips it by the shoulders and lightly shakes it.

“I’m not an Etch A Sketch, Ryan!”

Ryan tilts his head, considering this. Then he drops his fingers down and starts tickling it beneath the armpits.

There is absolutely no way that it studied biological diagrams and crafted this body with ticklishness in mind. And yet— ahaha. Ahahahahaha—

“Stop, stop!” it says, between heaves of laughter. It can see its edges flickering, its skin shifting between shades and shapes without conscious control. “ _Ryan_.”

Ryan stops. He sits straddling its waist, a smug expression on his face. “There,” he says.

It props itself up on its elbows. “No way. I probably look like a funhouse mirror.”

“See for yourself.” Ryan grabs the mirror off the mattress and passes it down.

It’s already unimpressed by the skinny milk-pale arms it can see reaching up to take the mirror. And it is kind of embarrassed by how much its heart is thudding as it tilts the glass toward its new face. None of this means anything. None of it is permanent. And yet—

“Oh.”

It’s the same nothing of a face from before. Maybe a little more sharply defined: the nose pointier (too pointy). The mouth smaller (too small). The eyes a little sunken, the hair just weird and all over the place. It’s so flawed and boring and ordinary. It looks up at Ryan and can’t understand why he is smiling.

“You keep going back to this one. I’ve seen you do versions of it while we were watching TV, when you weren’t really paying attention. I think it must be the one.”

It considers.

“Naw.” It shakes its head, goes Brad Pitt-handsome. Shakes it again, grows horns and fangs, swaps its round pupils for vertical slits. “ _Tho_ much better, right?” it says, lisping a little around its razor-sharp incisors. 

“No, stop.” Ryan isn’t grinning so widely anymore. There’s something wistful about his expression. “You don’t have to do that. I liked it— _really_.”

Its horns recede into its skull. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says. He pats its leg, which has gone all long and scrawny, so much so that Ryan’s borrowed shorts look too short on it. “It’s perfect for The Plan.”

“All right,” it says, “I’ll bow to your professional expertise as a human.”

Ryan grins. “Don’t worry,” he says. “You’re getting really good at it. Trust me.” He takes the mirror from its slack hand and shows it its face proudly. “You could fool anyone into thinking you’re real.”

* * *

Ryan wakes. He can feel the weight of his body beneath him, stretched out heavy on the bed—limbs neatly arranged, neck cradled by a pillow. A blanket’s been draped across him; his boots have been removed. He sits up.

Shane is sitting in the corner, in the chair by the window. His back straightens and chin lifts when Ryan glances toward him, but Ryan is already shifting over, sliding off the bed. He crosses the few feet to the bathroom and closes the door.

After a moment he switches on the light. He looks at his face in the mirror: it’s the same. He washes his hands. The mark on his wrist is still there, but bisected now by a white line. The depth of the black seems to be fading somewhat at the middle, like the color is slowly draining into an abyss. Ryan dries his hands on a towel. Glancing toward the tub, he sees two pairs of boots with their soles freshly scrubbed, propped up and drying. He flicks off the light.

Out in the main room, Shane hasn’t moved. His spine is perhaps a little straighter: hands gripping his knees, knuckles white. He’s changed into a fresh shirt.

“Prove it was you,” Ryan says.

Shane claims to love _proof_ and _evidence_ , and yet he seems thrown by this request. “Prove—”

“That you’re him. My friend, my _Beast_. I remember him.” Ryan swallows but his chest still feels weirdly empty. “I remember him, but not a single thing that connects him to _you_. You could be trying to trick me again. You could be something else, trying to make me think it’s my friend. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

Shane’s mouth opens, then clicks shut again. The timing’s not great, but hey—Ryan’s finally figured out how to get him to shut up.

“How much did you get back?” Shane asks finally, despairingly. 

Ryan folds his arms. “I’m not answering any more questions until you _prove_ it.”

“I don’t know how—”

An idea strikes him. “Do your party trick again. Start with that.”

“My _party_ trick?”

“Change,” Ryan commands. “Go on.”

Shane’s lips are pursed; he looks grim and unhappy. But he nods and stands, slowly. He unbuttons his cuff and starts rolling up his sleeve.

“No,” Ryan says abruptly, because abruptly he understands what he wants. “Not your hand, not your arm. _All_ of it. Your face and all the rest. Show me.”

Shane’s arms drop to his sides. “Ryan…”

“ _Show_ me,” Ryan insists.

“Why?” says Shane, helplessly. “What does that prove?”

“I want you to show me,” Ryan repeats. “If you want me to trust you again, even a little, you have to do what I want. And this is what I want.” To humiliate Shane. To annihilate him. The desire coils in his belly, a sick certainty. “ _Show me_ , Shane, or I swear I can’t stand looking at you another second—”

Shane’s shoulders stiffen. Ryan watches as his fists clench. His jaw twitches…and then all at once the tension bleeds out of it, bleeds out of his body. His eyes are mirror-blank as he looks at Ryan. “Fine,” he says. 

“Fiiiine,” he says again, but the word distorts; his jaw is shifting. His flushed skin turns darker, darker, blush red to blood red to burnt red-black. Horns sprout from his temples. His eyes roll over black, then burning yellow. He stalks toward Ryan on cloven feet. “Issss thissssss what you want?” he hisses. “What you’re expecting? Or this?” Hair sprouts from his arms, his shoulders; thick matted fur and heavy muscle. His jaw elongates and bursts forth with teeth. 

“Howsthis?” The words are a slur; they hardly sound human.

The thing in front of Ryan doesn’t _look_ human, not at all. It dissolves into thick black smoke, a pair of glowing blue eyes. It doesn’t even have a mouth to speak with, but it stares at Ryan, it lurches toward, reaching out with dripping tendrils of black mist. Ryan’s back hits the wall.

“All right, okay, enough!” he says, and then pleadingly, “ _Shane!_ ”

The black smoke swirls, coalesces, and there’s Shane standing in front of him. His cheeks are flushed with a faint blush of human color; Ryan can see his chest rising and falling with each labored breath.

“Is that what you wanted?” he asks.

Ryan shakes his head. He can’t tell if he’s close to tears or hysterical screaming. He leans heavily against the wall, rolling his neck away from Shane. For a minute or so, he just concentrates on breathing, collecting himself. His dim awareness of Shane—he’s taken a step back—is enough to sense that Shane’s doing the same. Perversely, that makes him feel a little better.

“So that was horrible,” he says finally.

“I know.” 

Their eyes meet. Ryan’s never felt so relieved to look at Shane’s stupid face. He has an odd and hastily suppressed urge to touch it.

Shane runs his fingers through his hair. (Ryan suppresses the urge to do that, too.) He lets out a sigh. “You used to like it. _I_ used to like it.”

“We were a lot younger then,” Ryan says, because he remembers—god, he _remembers_. Sitting propped against his pillows while his Beast—while _Shane_?—did faces for him: funny cartoon creatures and beings out of his books, out of their imaginations, out of Ryan’s _dreams_. He remembers it like he remembers sitting on his father’s shoulders to dunk his first basketball, like he remembers his mother teaching him to be shameless about singing in the car with the radio on full blast—“Dreaming of You” and “Kiss From a Rose” and “Take a Bow.” A little bit hazy after all these years, but fundamental, foundational, part of the underlying essence at the root of Ryan. It seems impossible that he could have forgotten this, that he could have lived with this hole in him all these years.

“We were younger,” Ryan says, letting out a heavy breath, “and back then I was watching a monster become my friend. Not—”

“Your friend become a monster?” Shane finishes for him, flatly. “Well put, Ryan. That’s probably a not insignificant factor.”

He stoops down and starts collecting the torn remnants of his clothes. They’re the same clothes that he’s currently wearing—clothes that on his body look whole and intact. Ryan is confused. Like, about a lot of things: but, for the moment, this. “Uh,” he says.

“It’s also hell on my wardrobe,” Shane says, catching the expression on Ryan’s face. “Which is much more of a drawback now that I actually pay for things.”

“But you’re wearing…”

Shane plucks at the flannel covering his chest. “I’m not wearing anything. I made this—I figured reforming stark naked would only make you _more_ hysterical. But I don’t actually like wearing _myself_ , so I’m going to go change into the only other set of clothes I packed that aren’t pajamas.” The declaration is definitive, but when he looks at Ryan there’s still a question in his eyes. “Just give me a minute. Okay?”

Ryan nods. He’s on something like the fifteenth distinct emotion he’s felt since waking from a magically induced coma; he’s feeling a little overwhelmed.

When Shane comes back out of the bathroom, he’s wearing clothes that hang on him a little more like clothes. He looks relieved, the slope of his shoulders a little softer. His hand moves up and seemingly unconsciously touches his face—Ryan realizes it’s far from the first time he’s done that in the last few minutes. Shane seems to catch himself at it too; he drops his hand, laughs a little ruefully.

“Sometimes I worry that I’ll forget what I look like,” he says, lightly.

Ryan’s stomach twists. “You look like you,” he says, as reassuringly as possible. He offers Shane an awkward thumbs up. “Nailed it.”

“Thanks,” Shane says, “I’ve been practicing.” He grins like he’s made a joke. Neither of them laugh.

“So,” Shane says.

“So,” says Ryan. “What the fuck is going on?”

He’s not mean about it this time. He just needs to know—needs Shane to _tell_ him. His head is swimming, brain bubbling with reclaimed memories like a glass of newly poured champagne, so he thinks he has a better idea of why this is all a _lot_ , more than a little difficult to explain. 

But you know: Ryan’s pretty willing to make the time.

“Can I?” Shane asks, and with none of the self-assurance of the day before waits for Ryan’s nod before picking up Ryan’s wrist to inspect the mark. “All right,” he says, “so it’s breaking gradually. I guess that’s good.”

“Why?”

“You know how you’re always talking about your brain melting?”

“Yeah…”

“If all your memories came back at once, it really might.”

“ _Shane!_ ”

“What? You get that I’m not some all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful being, right?” He drops Ryan’s wrist. “I learned about this stuff at the same time as you.”

Ryan swallows what he was about to say. Every two seconds it’s like the ground shifts again beneath him. He grew up in earthquake country, true, but this is a little much.

“I haven’t gotten there yet,” he says. “I don’t…I don’t have that.”

“Oh. Okay,” Shane says. Then he says, “Do you remember Rikki-Tikki-Tavi?”

“Rikki…” Ryan starts, and then the synapses connect and his brain does melt a little. Metaphorically speaking. 

Hopefully.

He slides his back down the wall and flops onto the floor. “Oh my _God_ ,” he says. He digs his thumbs into his temples. “I think all of this is providing me with a little too much psychological insight into myself.”

Shane shuffles from foot to foot, like there’s something he wants to say but can’t. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he settles on finally, sinking down to sit cross-legged opposite Ryan. “But really what I mean is…do you remember why we started—” With a rueful shake of his head, he revises: “Do you remember why I got you to play that ‘game’?”

He air quotes “game.” He looks goofy doing it, just like he looks goofy folding up his long noodle limbs, but Ryan can tell from his expression, from the tenor of his voice, that he’s dead serious. It’s an odd look on him, uncomfortable on his slender shoulders.

“We…” Ryan says, remembering: “we had to trick the cobras… Oh. OH FUCK.” Terror knifes into him. “Fuck, Shane! It wasn’t a game and the cobras are _demons_?!”

Shane’s frozen with his arms half-extended, like he doesn’t know whether or not he should reach out and comfort Ryan. Ryan makes the decision for him, snatching Shane’s nearest hand and squeezing it so hard it has to hurt. “ _Demons are fucking real!_ ”

“…Yes,” says Shane, like an idiot, like he’s somehow failing to grasp the magnitude of the situation. “We, we went over this, I’m a—”

“It’s different when it’s _you_ ,” Ryan says. He leaps up, paces two steps toward the bed pointlessly, circles back. “Oh fuck. Oh Jesus. Demons are real and they _know_ about me. Demons have been…popping by to visit me since I was a little kid! Fuck, Shane.” Ryan sinks back down. “What are we going to do?”

Shane drops his head. He reaches out toward Ryan, palm grazing Ryan’s knee. He looks almost like he’s offering himself in supplication. Ryan shivers.

“I don’t know,” Shane says, slowly dragging his gaze back up. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for the last twenty years.”

* * *

“Ready to do this?” Ryan asks.

“Ready,” it says.

“Okay,” Ryan says. “But that means you gotta come out of the hedge.”

“Right,” it says, pushing out of the hedge as smoothly as one can push out of a hedge. “I’m fine.”

“You have a leaf in your hair,” Ryan says. Giggling, he plucks it out.

A man comes down the sidewalk, trailing a basset hound on a leash, and it’s only because Ryan has his hand on it that it doesn’t lunge for cover.

It was raised in Hell. It’s faced down demons. It ought to be able to handle a paunchy guy in a tracksuit and his equally paunch-ridden canine. 

Still it knows its shoulder is shaking a little under Ryan’s hand when he squeezes it. Ryan lifts up onto his tiptoes to whisper in its ear. “You’re fine.”

“I think he could tell,” it whispers back.

“That guy?” says Ryan. “He didn’t even look at us.”

“Not the man,” it says, “ _the dog_.”

Ryan laughs and it feels a little better.

Then the bus pulls up.

“I’ll go first,” Ryan says. “Just put the money I gave you in the slot, then come and sit or stand by me.”

It nods. It’s suddenly not sure its whole esophageal system is working right.

But too late now. The doors have creaked open and Ryan is mounting the steps. It hurries up behind him on the weird skinny legs it’s for some reason given itself. The coins it’s clutching are sticky all of a sudden and it has to concentrate carefully to pluck them free of its palm without dropping them. It steals a glance up at the driver as the last quarter clinks home, and is ludicrously relieved to see that the only emotion she’s giving off is intense boredom. 

It starts down the aisle. Ryan has snagged them a pair of seats halfway down the length of the bus and is waving it toward him excitedly. The people it passes all have headphones over their ears or books held open in their laps; the ones whose eyes are unoccupied are mostly staring into space. When it reaches Ryan, he slides back out into the aisle. It looks at him curiously—did it do something wrong?

“You should have the window seat,” Ryan says. He’s so happy for it; it can’t believe it took it this long to get up the courage to do this for him. “So you can look out!”

It doesn’t want to disappoint him, so it stares diligently out the window as they pass clusters of tile-roofed shops and two-story strip malls. It’s seen the mortal realm before, of course: parts of the world Ryan couldn’t even imagine. But never quite like this; never with Ryan beside it, helping it pretend it’s actually part of this world.

Ryan points out the sights, such as they are—there have been nights when it’s wriggled its way from Hell up to Iceland or Alaska and spent hours it should have been hunting staring at the Aurora Borealis; it’s cultivated fear in Chile and Poland and Botswana and China. But Ryan’s face lights up when he points out the approaching crest of the race track, the _fancy_ movie theater, a place where Ryan found a ten dollar bill one time. It doesn’t have to feign delight.

But that’s before Ryan grabs its hand and tugs it toward the doorway and spills them out in front of their destination: the Santa Anita Mall.

It was born in Hell, but it’s never braved an American shopping mall.

The behemoth of a building is half enshrouded, laced with scaffolding where, for some reason beyond demonic understanding, they are _increasing_ the size of this already massive structure. Ryan leads it through the automatic doors and it walks into a wall of artificial air and light and perfumed scent. There’s a hum of low-level anxiety, mixed with bursts of pure endorphin rush. If it wanted to, it could feast here.

“Do you want to go to the Disney Store?” Ryan asks, beaming up at it.

The Disney Store is overwhelming. They wander around the overflowing, brightly colored displays. They try on felt versions of Woody’s hat and Kuzco’s crown. Ryan plunks Mickey’s hat from _The Sorcerer’s Apprentice_ on top of its head, and grinning beside him in the store’s mounted mirror, it finally sees the advantages to this face. It looks nonthreatening and maybe even adorable—or at least so the approving smiles of the shopping parents suggest. Though maybe that’s just Ryan. But at least it doesn’t look out of place beside him. It looks like something not undeserving of being called Ryan’s friend.

“There’s a shop that sells _swords_ here—wanna see?”

Uh, yeah. It _absolutely_ wants to see a sword shop.

They head back downstairs and toward the middle of the mall, which has a fountain at its center, like an altar. People are gathered there, sitting along the curved stone lip, by Ryan leads it past them with barely a glance. He’s fixated on the shining window display just ahead. Up close, it sees that the store is probably more accurately a _knife_ shop rather than a _sword_ shop, but it does boast some pretty impressive blades—whoa, is that a rack of katanas?

“ _Katanas_ ,” it whispers, tugging on Ryan’s sleeve, but Ryan’s gone weirdly stiff beside it. It glances over its shoulder in the direction Ryan’s looking just in time to see three older boys break away from the pack by the fountain.

“Don’t—” Ryan starts to say to it, but by then the boys have closed the distance and are looming over Ryan.

“Hey,” Ryan says to them as, under the guise of straightening its shoulders, it makes itself two inches taller.

“Hey, it’s Ryan Booger. I can’t believe your mom actually let you out of the house, Booger.”

There is a moment where there is a very real chance that it’s about to turn into an enormous shark-bear hybrid and rip these boys’ faces off. It only restrains itself because it knows that a mall mauling would make things awkward for Ryan. Though things are already, clearly, awkward for Ryan. It adds another inch of height.

“Who’s your friend?” asks the lead waste of space. If any of its siblings were partially responsible for this boy’s upbringing, it did its job extremely well; it deserved a beautiful retirement to some warm, sulfurous pit, and not the abrupt devouring it likely got. The boy’s soul certainly has a tang to it, the kind that speaks to an early, growing taint. 

Ryan doesn’t answer, and it goes from curling its nose to realizing that all three off the other boys are staring at it. The boy in the front grins.

“What, is he retarded? Booger, do you have a retard for a friend?”

“No…” Ryan answers, shakily.

“No, the retard’s not your friend? Do you hear that, retard?” The boy is looking at it again. “Booger doesn’t want to hang out with you anymore.”

Then he touches it. This insignificant mortal _child_ has the _gall_ to poke it in the shoulder.

“What’s your name, retard?”

The building warmth of righteous indignation blossoming inside it dies like a snuffed candle. Of all questions—

“Do you even _have_ a name?” this sniveling worm of a boy asks. He pokes it again.

“ _Yes_ ,” it says for some reason, surprised at the guttural burst of its own voice.

They stare at it for a moment, then start laughing. “Is it a secret?” jeers one of the lesser worms, sneering.

It nods. Then it shakes its head. What’s the right answer again? Why is it _sweating_?

The boys are all cackling. Ryan is a hunched, humiliated presence beside it. It can taste Ryan’s misery and it turns its stomach. The bullies’ dark glee buzzes in its brain like a swarm of bees. Its tongue isn’t working.

“Uh… _Bryan_ ,” it manages, finally. “My name is…Bryan?”

Oh no.

That’s wrong.

That’s not going to…

The worm leader howls with laughter. “ _Ryan_ and _Bryan_?” he says. “That’s perfect. You two little fags are meant for each other.”

It can see Ryan blanch. The bees buzz and buzz and the worms laugh and laugh and then all at once the hum dies away. It feels calm. Suddenly it remembers how this works. That it _knows_ this.

“Your mother doesn’t want you,” it says. 

The air changes, fills with that old sweetness.

“She never did. She tries her best to love you, sometimes, but in her heart of hearts, she knows— _you_ know—that she doesn’t.” 

The boy is twitching. The strength of the emotion pouring out of him—invisible to see, but there for it to taste, to lap up—is so intense that the effect is physical. Behind him, one of his friends laughs, nervously, and is just as nervously shushed by the other.

“You’re the worst thing that ever happened to her,” it says, and its belly fills with harvested fear even as the boy jerkily hauls back his fist and punches it in the face.

It’s not a very good punch—a glancing blow, though the boy’s knuckles do catch the tip of its nose. (Why did it make it so _big_?) Blood, or something resembling blood, spurts out of its nostrils. So its circulatory system totally works!

“Wow!” it says, grinning down at its hands—bloody red on white skin. The sudden satiation may have gone to its head a little. “This is great!”

All three of the boys are looking at it, aghast. One of the ones in the back is whimpering a little. The leader, the boy with the now-bloodied knuckles, has tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

“You’re a _freak_ , Booger,” he spits. “You’re both freaks!” 

Then he turns and flees, vanishing into the J.C. Penney. 

Ryan is tugging at its arm. “We gotta go, we gotta run,” he says, and it regains enough focus to notice a uniformed security guard stalking toward them. It reaches for Ryan’s hand, and even though its fingers are bloody, Ryan takes them. Together they bolt in the other direction, toward the Macy’s.

After weaving through a maze of makeup counters, men’s sportswear, and a women’s shoe sale, they make it through the exterior doors. Just to be safe, they execute a final, mad dash across the road, where they collapse on a bench outside a Marie Callender’s. Ryan is panting, but he’s also wheezing with laughter. He looks up at it with shining eyes. “That was awesome!”

“Was it?” it asks. It looks down at itself. “I ruined your shirt.”

“I don’t care about the _shirt_ ,” Ryan says. “Liam Fitzpatrick is in _seventh grade_.” 

It nods like it understands the nuance of this. 

“ _Bryan_ , though?” Ryan laughs. “That was terrible. We _really_ gotta figure out a name for you.”

Its heart—its lovely little heart, which can _spray blood_ —flutters in its chest. There are so many things it wants to say, but for some reason it settles on, “So long as it’s not _Booger_.”

“Deal,” says Ryan, with a snort. “Anyway, _Liam’s_ the booger. You showed him.”

Ryan springs to his feet. “We should celebrate!” He gestures toward the Marie Callender’s. “This is a pie restaurant! Let’s get _pie_.”

“I already ate,” it reminds him, gently.

“Oh.” Ryan’s smile falters for a second. “Well, do you still want to practice talking to the waitress? It would be good to see if you can have a conversation with somebody without getting in a fight.” A new little grin slips out.

“I will watch you eat pie and not fight the waitress,” it says.

“Cool,” says Ryan. “Uh…better wipe off your nose and turn your shirt inside out, first.”

They make themselves look presentable enough not to get kicked out of a family restaurant. Ryan orders something called “Razzleberry” pie, and when the waitress turns to it and says, “And for you, hon?” it does not fight her. It does, however, panic and say, “Same for me, please.”

“Sorry,” it whispers, once she’s walked away.

“Oh, how horrible,” Ryan laughs. “I’m gonna have to eat two slices of pie.”

“Such a brave sacrifice,” it agrees, solemnly.

“The things I do for you!” says Ryan. “No, though,” he pats its hand reassuringly, “that was perfect. You said it exactly the way a person would say it.”

It knows it should not be proud of ordering pie it didn’t want. But.

“You should maybe go to the bathroom before she gets back though,” Ryan continues. “You’ve still got a bit of blood on you.” He rubs at the skin above his own lip, to illustrate.

“All right,” it says; it’s honestly more than a little intrigued by the idea. It’s rarely visited human bathrooms, except for becoming a snake and emerging from a little girl’s toilet one time.

This bathroom has two stalls, each with its own toilet, and a row of three urinals along one wall. There’s no one else in there, so it takes its time, inspecting the layout, smelling the smells—about ten times stronger, and the stink would remind it of home. Then it runs water in one of the sinks and uses a paper towel to dab at its face. It has to scrape at the dried blood to get it to go away, and the towel is rough; it hurts a little. It’s fantastic—such variety of sensation! It grins into the mirror, sees this face transformed by a smile. It’s not such a bad face, maybe. It can almost see why Ryan might like it.

There’s a loud whoosh behind it: a toilet flushing. It doesn’t remember anyone coming in after it, but a man emerges from one of the stalls. He’s a middle-aged white man with brown hair topped by frosted tips. Striding over to the sink next to the one it’s using, the man stops and flashes his own broad grin into the mirror. He makes no move to wash his hands.

“Excellent job today,” he says.

Hellfire gleams in his eyes.

Shaking, it drops to its knees on the bathroom floor, head bowed.

“I’m glad my work is pleasing to the masters,” it says.

The master’s laugh is like two stones scraping together. “We may not be entirely convinced of your methods,” the master says, curling the lips of the human body encasing it. “But we do see progress. Slow progress. But interesting… You may make something great of him yet.”

“Terrific,” it says. “That’s…terrific. So good to hear.”

Fabric rustles as the master steps closer, into its space. It struggles not to flinch back as it feels flingers slip beneath its chin, tilt its face up to look the master in its stolen eyes.

“We are a little perplexed,” the master says. Fiery eyes sweep over its body, and it wants to shrivel into itself. “Is this really the best you can do?”

“I need to be able to blend in,” it says.

“Yes, of course. But this is so…inelegant. We expect more from you, little worm who roared.”

It curses itself. Should’ve been a movie star. Should’ve been Shaq. “Yes, but… He likes it,” it says, a spill of stupid honesty.

The master’s finger slips out from under its chin. “Ahh,” the master says. “He is developing well. Very good then.”

The master steps away, leaving it kneeling, baffled but relieved, in the middle in the bathroom floor.

“Keep up the _pleasing_ work,” the master says. “We’ll see you both soon.”

It doesn’t hear the door open behind it. And yet a second later, it is alone.

It makes sure to dry its face, calm its shaking hands, before it goes back out to Ryan. “I thought you _fell in_ ,” Ryan says, beaming up at it from the booth. “Look, the pie came!”

There are indeed two slices of pie sitting on the table, one pointed toward Ryan, one toward the empty seat. Ryan has waited for it. Even though he’s the only one who’ll be eating, he waited.

It grips the tabletop tightly as it slides into the booth. Across from it, Ryan grins and picks up his fork. The bite he breaks off is purple and glistening; his expression turns blissful as he tucks it into his mouth. “Berries,” he says with his mouth full, “so good. I wish—”

He might be about to say “I wish I could have _three_ slices” or—anything, really, other than what it hears, what it chooses to hear. An invitation to pick up its own fork—the one the waitress brought for _it_ , who she called _hon_ —and cut into the slice in front of it. The crust crumbles beneath the tines, the berries ooze a little onto the plate. There’s something pleasantly visceral about it. 

Then the taste on its tongue: sweet, a little tangy, the flavors and textures coming together, complementing each other just like fear tastes even better mixed with regret, depression with a topping of anxiety.

It chews until the pie begins to get unpleasantly mushy, then swallows. It is very weird, at first, to feel its food moving down its throat, solid and physical, nothing _meta_ physical about it. But growing orifices was weird at first, too, and so was having a heart, a tongue, a voice. A Ryan.

A Ryan who is staring at it in shock. It grins back at him. “It _is_ good,” it says.

“Yeah!” Ryan’s delight is instant and genuine; he doesn’t seem upset in the least that his pie haul has just been cut in half. “You sure you’re okay, though?” he asks. “You can eat it?”

It replies by taking another big, pointless, unbelievably satisfying bite.

“I can do anything I want,” it says.

* * *

“This is gonna sound nuts,” Ryan says, “but I’m starving? Can we go get something to eat?”

Between fighting off an army of demon worms, having several of the essential truths of his existence revealed as lies, taking a magical power nap, and talking in circles with Shane for the last hour—well, he could really use a sandwich or something.

To his relief, Shane chuckles at the suggestion. “Yeah, my tummy’s rumbling too.”

What would once have been a generic statement, ordinary and not worth remarking upon, now gives rise to several _major_ questions. Ryan bites back on them for the moment. Instead he simply asks the most crucial one: “Is it safe for us to go out?”

“No,” says Shane. “We have to stay in this motel room forever.”

Ryan stares at him. “Do I look like I’m laughing, Shane? Do I look like I’m ready for us to be at the _jokes_ stage with this?”

Ordinary Shane, yesterday’s Shane, would make a joke _right then_ ; jokes—inappropriate jokes, even—is who they are, it’s where they live. But that’s all over with; it’s mushed into the carpet like a bunch of worm demon guts. 

This new Shane, his shoulders slump. He can’t seem to meet Ryan’s eyes. “Sorry,” he says. “I can make it safe. Saf _er_. As safe as I can, anyway.”

He walks over to his backpack and rummages around. A moment or two later, he straightens up again, holding a knife.

Ryan can’t help himself: he flinches back. He feels foolish the moment he does it, but it’s too late: Shane sees it. Ryan sees Shane see it. They stand there awkwardly for a moment, in silent acknowledgment of having seen and been seen. It’s not great. 

But then Shane simply looks down at his feet again, and takes a broad path around Ryan on the way to the bathroom.

Ryan trails guiltily after him. He finds Shane perched on the lip of the tub, one of Ryan’s ghoul-stomping boots held between his thighs. The knife point is cutting into the sole, and Shane twists it gracefully, expertly. “I’m gonna need your help to activate it,” he says.

“More spit?” asks Ryan. Like this is a perfectly normal question.

“Blood would be better,” Shane says. His eyes flick up for a second before he returns to his work. “But spit’ll work for a while.”

“Magic involves a lot more bodily fluids than I thought it would,” Ryan remarks.

“This kind does,” Shane says. “It’s a particularly human kind.” The knife clinks as he sets it aside on the edge of the tub. He holds the boot up to Ryan. “Right over the symbol,” he instructs. 

Ryan starts to gather fluid in his mouth. “So is it just blood and spit, then?” he can’t help but ask. “That have…properties?”

Shane’s mouth twitches. “Honestly? Semen works great.”

Ryan nearly chokes. “Dammit—”

“Vaginal lubrication, too, obviously,” Shane says. He shrugs. “Probably urine…”

Ryan makes a dramatic gagging sound. “Dear J.K. Rowling,” he says, once he’s sure he can breathe again, “Thanks for giving me falsely non-disgusting expectations. Also, fuck you for killing Hedwig…” He pauses, looking down at the boot in his hand, the boot on which Shane has just carved a magic rune, upon which he is about to seal a spell. “Hand me the knife,” he says.

“You sure?” Shane says, passing it up to him. 

“It’ll work better? Last longer?” Shane nods. “Then what’s a pinprick?”

Bold words. After that he _has_ to follow through. Logically, he knows he’s jammed his fingers and been fouled in basketball and had it hurt way worse than this will, but it’s still difficult to deliberately cut himself, to injure himself _on purpose_. And now Shane’s giving him a _look_. “Fuck,” he says, and swipes across the base of his palm.

Blood wells up. Ryan feels like a little kid: not all the way realizing that he’s hurt until he sees the blood. He manages to land several large droplets on the symbol, at least, before he’s dropping the knife into the basin of the sink and turning on the water, shoving his bleeding hand under the spray.

“That was not a pinprick,” Shane says. “And that’s not going to help. Here,” he says, and this time, Ryan doesn’t flinch away from him. He lets Shane take his hand, lets him press a messy wad of toilet paper to the cut, lets him fetch the little white plastic first aid kit they take with them on shoots.

Shane puts the toilet seat down and sits Ryan on it. “I am a grown man,” Ryan protests, like he didn’t just get woozy because he bled a little onto a shoe. Kelsey Darragh would probably consider that a boring Tuesday night.

Shane opens the first aid kit atop Ryan’s knees and squats down in front of him. “Sure, but I remember you when you were this big,” he says, holding his hand three feet off the ground. A strange, gentle smile has broken out across his face, and if Ryan weren’t already dizzy, it’d make him so to recognize that while he may have forgotten their shared history, Shane never did. Shane has remembered it, all of it, this whole time. For as long as Ryan’s ever known him.

“I pulled splinters from your thumb with my _teeth_ ,” Shane says softly.

“That’s creepy,” Ryan says, because objectively, it is. It is extremely creepy. Shane is a total creep.

Shane dabs some Neosporin on a Band-Aid, then presses it carefully over Ryan’s cut. “What, no teeth for this?” Ryan says.

Shane’s gaze flicks up. “Want me to do it over?”

“I want _food_. Get out of the way and let me put on my magic boots.”

It is exceedingly strange to step outside, to see with his own eyes that the world has continued to exist beyond the confines of their motel room. It felt to Ryan like they were in there for years; they lived whole lives and died there. But actually it’s only been about five hours. The sky is starting to turn a soft pearly pink. The ground holds when Ryan touches down with the soles of his ensorcelled footwear.

“You’re sure this is safe?” he asks, turning back to look at Shane, still framed in the doorway.

Shane’s silent for a moment. “Nothing’s completely safe,” he says finally. “Not for us.”

He waits—so clearly, he waits for Ryan to say, _And whose fault is that?_ Ryan could say it. He probably should say it. Instead he rolls his eyes and lets out a dramatic sigh. “At least I know I have something real to be scared about now. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief.”

Shane’s laugh sounds a little hollow. But at least he laughs.

Ryan didn’t hold his ground on the “no jokes” thing very well, did he. Oh well.

They walk down the road to the diner. Ryan still has a million questions he wants to ask—to _demand_ answers to—but for the moment it seems right that they should simply walk. Shane is a comforting presence beside him—Ryan has _always_ found it comforting to have Shane beside him, ever since they first met. Or “met,” as he now knows—that instant connection, that odd sense of almost-recognition explained. Though Ryan had never before _sought_ any explanation: taking it for granted, whatever it was he and Shane had. What he thought they had. _Lies_.

No. Nope. Ryan can feel himself starting to panic. He looks over at Shane, because it has become his first reaction, to look to Shane when he is panicky and scared. Shane catches his gaze, lips quirking as they always do, like Ryan is amusing to him, and like this for some reason means Shane will protect him, because he can never let anything bad happen to someone who delights him so. Ryan’s belly warms, instinctively soothed, while in the back of his mind he figures: all right. They can both keep lying for a little while. 

They lie to the waitress who asks how they’re doing as she seats them, Shane slathering on the midwestern charm. (Except Shane isn’t actually from the Midwest, is he?) They keep it up, cheerfully ordering waffles and bacon and coffee. They sip from their cups when they come, eying each other over the rims of their mugs, living the lie for another moment that this is all fine, all normal, same as yesterday morning: same diner, same booth, same waitress, same Ryan, same Shane.

Shane watches him and waits. Probably he thinks he’s polite, letting Ryan be the one to shatter or maintain the illusion of their fineness.

Or maybe he’s just a big dumb coward.

Shane blinks at him. Ryan finds himself suddenly fixated on the length of his eyelashes, the light spattering of freckles on his cheeks. All the little details of him: are they all deliberate, designed? Ryan can’t wrap his mind around it, that this face that he knows so well must in fact be entirely a construct, every bit of it crafted with intent. Shane made his nose look like that _on purpose_. Objectively, it is a very odd choice, and yet knowing it was a calculated decision makes Ryan feel queasy and anxious, almost called out, because as weird as all these choices are individually, in point of fact, Ryan has always, well.

“Go on,” Shane says in a low voice. “Ask me what you want to ask.”

Ryan thinks for a moment, looking down at the table. Then abruptly he blurts out: “Are ghosts real?”

Shane shakes his head.

Ryan says, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“I’m serious!” says Shane. “I swear, I’m not messing with you. I have never seen _any_ evidence of ghosts.”

“You mean aside from all the evidence that we— All right, never mind, but I find it hard to believe that—”

“Ryan, think about it from Hell’s perspective. Souls are a hot commodity, literally our—their—bread and butter. Why would they let them wander around upstairs, rattling chains and flicking flashlights on and off?”

Ryan leans so far forward his chest presses into the edge of the table. “Wait, so you don’t know for _sure_?”

“It doesn’t make any sense!” Shane waves his hands around instead of answering Ryan’s very simple question.

“You don’t _know_. You have _no idea_. Ghosts could totally be real.” Ryan sits back with a satisfied smirk.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to keep making our show then,” Shane says.

“I guess so,” agrees Ryan.

He doesn’t have to work quite so hard to fake a smile when their waitress comes back with their food.

Shane digs in with his usual gusto. Ryan has always secretly enjoyed Shane’s enjoyment of food, of _shitty_ food, because it matched Ryan’s own, in quantity and enthusiasm. He has to wonder, now, if he in fact _made_ Shane this way, if—

“Wait, how can you eat this?”

Shane has a strip of bacon dangling out of his mouth. “I know it’s not kosher,” he says, “but—”

“No.” Ryan drops his voice down to a hiss. “ _Human food_. I remember—”

Trying to share his Halloween candy with his Beast and the sad shake of his blue, furry head. ( _Shane? Could that really have been_ … But it seems impossible: the disconnect still there, wide and deep as a canyon.) And later, after his Beast came back, once he had learned how to talk, Ryan remembers his—in retrospect—halting and confused explanation of why he couldn’t share Ryan’s Pocky, his gummy worms, the sweet green grapes Ryan had stolen from the kitchen especially for him.

_I eat something else, I’m sustained by emotions._

_Happy thoughts?_ Ryan had asked, because he’d recently seen _Peter Pan._

 _No_ , his Beast had answered, looking away, _not exactly_.

And at some point later, Ryan had figured it out, in the way that little kids figure things out—fire is hot, Santa’s not real, people die; a way that seems foreign to him now, as an adult: far too calm and matter of fact. _My Beast provokes, and then consumes, people’s fear._

_But never mine._

“—I remember you couldn’t,” Ryan finishes, flushing.

“I learned,” says Shane, with a lift of his brow.

Ryan—ha!—digests this statement. “But how? How does that _work_?”

“The normal way, Ryan.” Shane’s fingers trace briefly down his chest. “I wanted to speak so I made myself a mouth, a tongue, lungs, a diaphragm. I wanted to eat, so I made a stomach, an esophagus, intestines… It’s _science_ ,” he says with a small smile.

“You’re a demon and you’re still bitching to me about science.” Ryan stabs at his waffle in faux frustration. They’re sitting here talking about this and it’s dizzying, impossible, but it’s also _them_ , and if you set the full ramifications aside, this is honestly not the strangest discussion they’ve ever— “Wait, does that mean you _remember_ the first time you…”

“Paid homage to the porcelain throne?”

Ryan nods, full of fascination and disgust.

“Yup.”

“What…how was it?” is apparently a question he’s just asked.

“Revolting,” Shane says, “and fantastic.”

“Cool. Are we just going to keep eating while we talk about this?” Ryan asks.

“Think so.”

“That does sound like something we’d do.”

“It does.” Shane grins around another massive bite of waffle.

“What does it get you, though?” Ryan can’t help but ask. Part of him feels like he’s being wildly invasive and inappropriate, a walking “When You Tell Humans You’re a Demon” video. “Eating human food? Is it even sustaining?”

“No.” Shane’s expression is too well-schooled, and it’s not helping. “But it’s _delicious_. The variety of flavors, foods that are _sweet_ or _warm_ or that don’t make you— Look, there’s no benefit to humans to drinking alcohol, either, but they certainly do. Isn’t there something to be said for pleasure for pleasure’s sake?” Shane licks syrup off his lips.

Ryan drops his eyes to his plate. 

“I still don’t understand,” he says, after a minute. 

“I can draw you a diagram—”

“No, not about your digestive system, Jesus Christ.” Fear stabs back into Ryan with sudden force. He has to make himself raise his face and confront Shane head-on. “What do your demon bosses want from me? What do _you_ want? Why are you _here_?”

Shane swallows and sets his fork down. “They want to use you to harvest souls. _I_ want to keep you safe. And I want to be free of them. Both of us. Okay?”

“ _No_ ,” Ryan says, “no, it’s not _okay_.” He’s aware of their waitress watching them, and the presence of the diner’s other few patrons, so he keeps his voice to a low hiss. “This is insane! We make a show about hunting ghosts and demons, Shane! Half of Hell is after us and you’re taunting demons for YouTube hits? How does that keep us _safe_?”

“Almost nothing we’ve hunted has been real,” Shane starts to say in a reassuring voice, but Ryan interrupts him with a shrill shriek of, “ _Almost_?”

“The Sallie House—” Shane starts.

“I KNEW IT.” The slam of Ryan’s fist on the table shakes the china and definitely attracts the attention of anyone who wasn’t listening in on them before.

“—didn’t have a demon it,” Shane finishes calmly. He puts his hand on top of Ryan’s fist till it deflates like rock being conquered by paper. “Probably the Pickmans’ son _was_ being courted by one of my kind, but it was long gone by the time we visited.”

Ryan _hrmphs_ his disbelief.

“And Eastern State Penitentiary was absolutely infested with furies. Those dudes suck. I had to fake stomach problems so I could go back after the shoot and clean them out.”

“Wait,” Ryan says, going rigid, “are you telling me that the story about airport hot dogs is a _lie_?”

“Well, I did eat them—you saw me. But like I said, I made this digestive system myself, it works perfectly—”

Shane is, foolishly, still touching Ryan’s hand; Ryan snags his fingers and squeezes in a manner that’s not particularly friendly. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Uh…” says Shane, stupidly.

“You _lied_. About the _hot dogs_ ,” Ryan chokes out. “Is _nothing_ sacred, Shane?”

Shane seems taken aback by Ryan’s sudden upset—but then he’s always been a big dumb robot idiot. A big dumb robot _demon_ idiot.

“So, um, I have a feeling that this, maybe, is not actually about hot dogs?”

“No _shit_ it’s not about hot dogs,” Ryan says, snatching his hand away from Shane’s. “This is about _everything_ , our whole—friendship, partnership, whatever. _The Ghoul Boys, ride or die_. But how the fuck am I supposed to ride with you if I can’t _trust_ you?”

Ryan’s dropped his voice back down to a whisper, although it’s probably too late and by this point the whole diner thinks he’s confronting his cheating boyfriend. “How am I supposed to believe anything you’ve told me, _ever_?”

Shane gulps. “I’ll cast a truth spell on myself,” he declares.

Two days ago, it would have filled Ryan with infinite glee to hear Shane even reference something like a truth spell with any degree of seriousness. But now he has to scoff: “And how am I supposed to know that it’s real, that you’re not just tricking me again?”

Shane purses his lips, considering. Then, “ _You_ can cast it,” he says.

“Cast a spell _you_ teach me?” Ryan finds it very strange to hear this level of skepticism in his own voice. “How does that help?”

“No,” Shane says. There’s something odd, a hitching reluctance, to his tone. “If your memory keeps coming back, you’ll know how to do it.” He lays a hand flat on the table. “We learned that one together.”

“So I’m just supposed to _sit around_ and wait for my mind to vomit up some memories?”

“You know, maybe you really should look at an anatomy diagram…”

“ _Shane_.”

“Sorry,” Shane says, hunching his shoulders even more than usual. “Habit.” He trails his finger through a little puddle of condensation on the table top. “We could try to trigger it,” he says.

Ryan gives Shane a look that he hopes appropriately conveys his suspicion and distrust. But he’s curious. “How?”

Shane leans forward across the table. “Something was sparking memories, wasn’t it, when we were at the Witch Shanty?”

Ryan shudders. He doesn’t want to think about those things—the flames and the ash, the weight on his chest. “That was different,” he says. “That wasn’t my childhood, it was—” He swallows heavily. “This isn’t helping—”

“All right, okay.” Shane’s tone is soothing. “But the principle of it. Maybe we can unlock things faster if we find the right trigger. Proust’s madeleine, except…”

“You’re such a nerd,” Ryan says, but then he sees Shane smiling, that evil little smile that means he’s just had an _idea_. 

“And you,” Shane says, before Ryan can tell him to stop, to wait—though he speaks slowly, gives Ryan plenty of time to try. “You’re my little king.”

“Huh?” Ryan says.

“You’re my _little king_ ,” Shane repeats hopefully. “No? Nothing?”

“My rise to power has been abrupt, but I’ll try to rule justly. Is that the best you’ve got?”

Shane lets out a horsey sputter of a sigh. “Sometimes I can’t believe we haven’t been caught and eviscerated yet; we’re really very bad at this.”

“It’s not _my_ fault; I have amnesia,” Ryan says, or starts to say; suddenly he feels very dizzy. “Oh,” he says. “Oh! Shane! Delayed—”

* * *

“How much longer?”

“Wait for it,” it says.

“You said that five minutes ago!”

“It’s been like thirty seconds, Ryan.”

“Whatever, it’s clearly not working. Are you sure that book’s legit?”

“ _Yes_.” Ryan had no idea of the lengths it had gone to to acquire this particular volume: shuffling from subconscious to subconscious, searching through thousands of people’s thoughts and fears and memories for the smallest possible hint of anything that could be useful, anything that might lend it power. Tracing down every possible lead, traveling alone and uneasy in a variety of strange adult human guises to meet with con artists, mad men, psychopaths and delusional hacks. Again and again until it found something that felt authentic, that might be real. That might enable it to fight back.

“This is the Necronomicon,” he tells Ryan. “It’s bound in human flesh.”

“What?” Ryan yelps, half hopping up from where he’s curled at his end of the bed.

“I’m kidding,” it says. It nudges Ryan’s ankle gently with its own.

“You suck,” Ryan tells. “For that, you get to be…” He flips a couple pages in his own book. “Myron,” he pronounces.

It shrugs; it knows Ryan isn’t going to name it _Myron_.

“It means ‘perfume,’” Ryan says, as if that might be the last straw, the one insult it cannot bear.

“I do smell wonderful,” it says.

“You really don’t. You smell like an ashtray.”

It gestures to what’s sitting beside its knee. “The ashtray smells like an ashtray, Ryan.”

“And now you smell like it because you keep rubbing your hands in it. You got some on my _bed_.” He pouts.

“It’s for a good cause,” it protests.

Ryan makes a face. “Okay—” _flip, flip, flip_ “— _Kenneth_.”

It laughs. “Are you saying I’m your Ken doll, Ryan? You do like to dress me up.”

Blushing, Ryan picks up his pillow and swipes at it. “Shut up. I’ll call you that for real.”

“No, you won’t,” it says, as confident in the statement as it is in its dodge. It snags the corners of the piece of black cloth where it’s drawn its sad attempt at an ashen rune and carries it carefully over to the trash can beside Ryan’s desk. Attempt No. 7, whisked away.

It watches the flakes of ash flutter into the trash and feels a sudden heaviness in its gut. “You’re never going to give me _any_ name,” it mutters.

“What?” Ryan says, too sharply, but before it can react to _that_ , it hears a step outside Ryan’s door, and then a hand on the knob, and in a surge of panicked instinct, it’s shrinking itself down to its original shape. The shorts it had borrowed from Ryan pool around it; his shirt covers it like a blanket.

From the muffled darkness of its new cocoon, it can hear Ryan say, “Daaaaad! You’re supposed to _knock_.”

“Knock knock,” Ryan’s dad says.

“That doesn’t count!”

“I heard you laughing, mijo, I thought maybe you had a friend over?” There’s an unmistakable note of hope in his father’s voice.

“No, I’m alone, and I’m _busy_ ,” Ryan says.

There’s a pause. It can picture the scene it just stepped out of: Ryan on his bed at 3 pm on a sunny Saturday, leafing through a baby name book while a much more intimidating leather-bound volume and a half-full ashtray stolen from the patio of the dive bar a few blocks away sit perched by the footboard.

“Ryan, tell me you aren’t _smoking_.”

“I’m not!” Ryan squeaks.

“Then why do you have this? Where did you even get it?”

“I found it! And it’s just for…”

“ _For_?” 

Beneath the waistband of Ryan’s discarded shorts, it squirms helplessly. _Rikki-Tikki-Tavi!_ it wants to shout—because at least when Ryan’s being monstrous, he can sometimes come up with a convincing lie.

“A, a magic spell,” Ryan says. “Er.”

“A magic spell,” repeats Ryan’s father.

“Yes,” says Ryan, committing to it, apparently. “You know, like in _Harry Potter_?”

“I don’t remember that from the movie,” Ryan’s dad says.

“You have to read the books, it’s in the fourth book, _Goblet of_ Fire, get it?”

The sound of footsteps, coming closer. They stop by the bed. “I still think maybe there’s a more hygienic spell you could try. Maybe an outside spell?”

“ _Daaaad_.”

“Or maybe you want to come watch this Western movie marathon with me? It’s on AMC.”

“I don’t want to watch your Westerns. I just wanna be left alone, Dad, please, okay?”

A moment of hesitance; then it hears Ryan’s bedsprings creak, like the weight on them is being shifted. Ryan makes a little noise at the back of his throat, a mix of pleasure and embarrassment, and it knows his dad is ruffling his hair.

“Okay, but I’ll have it on in the den if you change your mind. Right now it’s John Wayne in _The Searchers_ , and after that, your favorite, Alan Ladd—”

“Okay, jeez. You’ve seen these movies a thousand times.”

“I like what I like, mijo. It’s okay to like things.”

“Right,” Ryan says, the eye roll too audible in his voice, “thanks, Dad.”

“But Ryan?”

“…Yeah?”

“Don’t leave your clothes on the floor like that.”

Footsteps again. And then finally, finally, the door clicking shut.

“Are you all right?” Ryan whispers. “Are you still _here_?”

It slithers out from beneath the pile of clothes and as quickly as it can, reassumes its human shape. It feels strangely shaky, flesh wobbly as Jello; it realizes, haltingly, calculating back, that it has been weeks since it had last returned to its true form. Hastily, it tugs Ryan’s shorts back up over its hips, then gingerly takes a seat on the edge of his bed. It touches its face, surprised at how solid it feels.

“He took your ashtray,” Ryan says apologetically.

“It doesn’t matter,” it says. “It wasn’t working anyway.”

Ryan doesn’t say anything, so it adds, genuinely: “I’m sorry I got you in trouble.”

“You didn’t,” Ryan says. “I… _I’m_ sorry. I haven’t— _Shane_.”

It lifts its head. “What? What did you…”

“Shane,” Ryan says softly. “I’ve actually had it picked out for a while.”

Its heart throbs in its chest. It stares at Ryan. His cheeks are streaked with tears; he’s crying.

“Don’t…” It feels warm all over, solid from the tips of its tingling toes to its blazing fingers. “Why are you crying? It’s _perfect_.”

“You have it now,” Ryan says, breath hitching. “So now you can go.”

“What?” It lets out a little befuddled laugh. “What do you mean, go?”

“Isn’t that how it works?” Ryan meets its eyes with a look of pure tear-stained misery. “I’ve named you, and now you’re free.”

For a second, it feels like there’s some sort of weird lump or obstruction in its throat. It swallows heavily. “Ryan,” it says, reaching for his knee with trembling fingers, “I’m not the genie from _Aladdin_.”

Ryan’s expression turns baleful. He swats at its hand. “Shut up, I know you’re not the genie from _Aladdin. You_ can’t even do a simple magic spell!”

It grins at him. “Who can’t?”

“ _You_ can’t,” says Ryan, confused for a moment, but then he gets it: “You. _Shane_.”

It’s an ordinary name, an average name; on a real, quantifiable level, no better or worse than _Myron_ or _Kenneth_. But the sound sends a thrill racing up its spine. Its name.

It throws its body alongside Ryan’s. It can’t help itself; it needs to be close, needs to see and hear and feel Ryan shape its name on his lips. It pillows its head beside his hip.

“Tell me more about myself,” it says.

“You’re Shane and you’re really annoying,” Ryan says. 

It laughs, delighted.

“You’ve made yourself stupidly tall and you think you’re smarter than me even though _I_ had to teach you how to read and you’re not any good at basketball _or_ at magic.” His hand drifts down and he swipes almost absently at its hair, a whisper of a touch brushing its bangs across its forehead.

“You’re _Shane_ ,” he says, then in a rush: “and you’re my best friend and you’re my Beast and you’ll always come back to me. Right?”

“Always,” it says, “for as long as I am able.” Then it flashes a grin at Ryan and adds: “Unless you figure out my magic _secret_ name and say it while walking widdershins three times in a circle under a full moon at midnight and then—”

“Oh my God, shut _up_.”

“Who, me? I don’t know who you’re talking to, you didn’t say my _name_.”

“Shut up, _Shane_.”

It preens. 

Shane preens like a cat. Shane throws an arm loosely over Ryan’s waist; with Shane’s other hand, Shane picks up the discarded baby name book.

“Let’s see what _Ryan_ means,” Shane says. 

Shane flicks through the pages. Helpfully, Ryan’s name is marked in the margin by a penciled star—this must have been his parents’ book. “Irish,” Shane reads.

“ _Irish_?” sputters Ryan.

“It means _little king_.”

Ryan’s nose scrunches. “I like…half of that,” he says.

“You want to rule?” Shane says teasingly, and then abruptly its stomach sinks. _A politician, a CEO…_

But Ryan just shrugs. “I wanna show you how magic’s _really_ done.” He squirms out from under Shane’s arm and snags the little leather-bound book from the end of the bed. “This didn’t look _that_ hard.”

“You have to draw the symbol perfectly _and_ activate it _and_ evoke its power with your will—physical and mental and spiritual, all together. Also, we’re out of ash.”

“Okay, so we’ll try one that’s less likely to set my bedspread on fire.” Ryan opens to the front of the book and squints down at the spidery writing on the page, frowning in concentration. He looks—an unlikely ruler of much. 

Maybe just one thing.

“All right,” he says after a couple minutes, “I think maybe I…”

He picks up the water glass from his bedside table. “Hold out your hand,” he tells it.

Without question, it does so.

Delicately, deliberately, Ryan pours a few drops of water into Shane’s palm. Shane curls its fingers, forming a little bowl. There’s no way this is going to work, but it has to appreciate Ryan’s effort.

“Sorry about this next bit,” Ryan says. He leans low over Shane’s cupped hand, lips almost brushing Shane’s skin. Then he spits.

“…Okay,” Shane says.

“Sorry,” Ryan repeats.

“I don’t mind,” it says. “Perfectly natural.”

“ _Super_ natural,” says Ryan, with a giggle. “Hold still.”

His index finger touches down in the center of Shane’s palm. It can feel the pressure, the point of his fingertip, as slowly it starts to move, sketching a small jagged shape like a wave across Shane’s damp skin.

Its hand grows heavy. The water pools and pools, weighing it down. 

“Oh,” Shane gasps, “Ryan, you’ve—”

* * *

“—Reaction.” He blinks.

“Ryan?”

“Oh my god.” Ryan sinks back slowly until the wings of his shoulder blades hit the rear of the booth. “That was…”

Shane’s brow is furrowed; he looks concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I didn’t pass out this time,” Ryan observes. “That’s nice.”

“Ryan.” Shane has blown past concerned; he’s worried now, there’s an edge to his voice. “You sound high.”

Ryan shakes his head. This is the opposite of being stoned: this is clarity building inside his bones, memory and knowledge taking root. He feels fuller, realer than he has in years—than in perhaps his entire adult life.

He lifts his chin and looks at Shane, really looks at him. How has he stared at Shane almost every day for the last five years and not known? It seems preposterous, maddening.

What a relief, then, to look at him now and know, “It _is_ you.”

Shane’s cheeks flush an impossible pink. His jaw drops open and he breathes Ryan’s name.

Ryan’s head feels so clear, and yet something about the expression on Shane’s face muddles him again; it’s too weird, wrong somehow, to see Shane’s hand shake as he struggles to put down his mug. He’s still trembling as he awkwardly, fumblingly, lifts his coffee-flecked fingers and reaches vaguely toward Ryan. He looks aimless and uncertain, and that’s enough to send Ryan’s own insecurities rushing back—to remember _himself_ and not just Shane. “Wait,” he says.

Shane’s hand drops back into his lap. “Sorry.”

“I just,” Ryan says, “I need a minute, I…”

Not sure where to look, his eyes alight on the ring of moisture dribbling out from beneath Shane’s glass of ice water. And this Ryan remembers now: what he can do; how simple it is, how extraordinary.

He pushes the glass out of the way with the back of one hand; the first two fingers of the other are already in his mouth. He sucks them till they’re slick, then pulls out and drops the tips of his fingers into the pool of condensation. The shape of the rune unfurls, as easy as the lines and curves of his own name.

And the water begins to flow. 

It seems almost to rush out of Ryan: like a switch flicked, a gate unlocked, and then the relief of a release too-long pent up. Ryan’s shoulders shake with the force of his expelled sigh. But he retains his control: the water building, but not too fast, not too much; all and everything that he believes it should be.

With a grin, Ryan twists his wrist, scooping up what he’s made into a tiny ball, a perfect sphere of shimmering liquid that spins and floats above the palm of his hand. Cradling it, he lifts his eyes and looks up across the table, beaming.

“I’m a wizard, Shane.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fact that last night's episode validated Ryan's childhood cowboy influences just makes me so, so happy. On top of how happy that episode made me on every other level.
> 
> These dumb darling boys have persuaded me to reactivate my tumblr after two and a half years, so if you feel like it, [please come talk to me there](http://trinityofone.tumblr.com), about cowboys or anything else!


End file.
